From: Dave Sill (extropians@dave.sill.org)
Date: Wed Feb 27 2002 - 07:17:45 MST
Alex Ramonsky <alex@ramonsky.com> wrote:
>
> My question is...Why do lyrics and poetry like this frighten and upset
> people? Because they do...
> There are three different types of reaction to stuff like this. Some people
> say, 'doesn't make any sense to me'. Other say 'Oh yeh I get it it's kind of
> abstract; poetic'. But the third lot say 'BS! Wank! Rubbish!' and over-react
> completely, trying really hard to discredit the author, almost frantic to
> prove it 'doesn't mean anything, it's rubbish'.
> I have noticed such a strong reaction of this kind for so many years, Ithis
> response of 'Huh! Mystical crap!'
> Can anyone explain why this sort of usage of language provokes this
> reaction? Are people actually frightened of it because they don't understand
> it?
I'll take a stab at this because I suspect you think I'm one of the
`third lot'. I personally have no objection to such abstract writing
in lyrics or poetry because they're artistic forms of expression that
attempt to convey feelings and emotions, not just information.
I do object when such techiques are applied to prose, which is
supposed to be conveying information.
If Bey's writings are poetry disguised as deep intellectual prose,
then they're successful: they had me completely fooled. I don't like
that, though, because I wasted substantial effort trying to make sense
of them.
-Dave
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 13:37:41 MST