Onscreen
So my friend told me how his young nephew, who lives in another city, maybe thinks his uncle is a computer programme. This makes sense. Like all the other applications he is conjured by mouse-click; a flat, jerky man who by some disconcerting charm you can never make eye contact with. So, Picard-like, he points to the screen and asks for his uncle. Ode (2010 AD) Oh! You spirits of far flung friends! I have lost the memory of when you were flesh. Now you blink mysteriously on and off like the lights on a thunderbirds set. Your voices, your faces forgotten; light up your small green circles and appear to me... Darling,
I know that the writing which seems the most effortless to an outside eye is often the most carefully constructed, but no matter how any drafts I put this through, somehow it still sounds calculated. I’ll think it's finished, and that it's saying everything I want it to say, simply and truthfully- and then I'll notice one word that doesn’t sit right, or gives the wrong impression. Of course, changing it messes up the flow of an entire sentence, and then the whole thing is wrong. Words can be so slippery. Darling. Please believe me when I tell you I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve tried to write to you, apologising for everything. X |
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June 2016
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