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#9

INTELLIGENT WRITING

When you go to write something, you can either babble…or write. Babble is easy. It spills out effortlessly from either the conscious or the sub-conscious mind. Sometimes for this very reason, people credit it as being genuine—perhaps even being the “true” voice of the person speaking!

But let’s hope that that’s not our true voice! Our true voice as whatever expresses the most substance—not the least! To write something of substance, we must first gain some degree of substance ourselves. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist from the 1800s once said: I can’t hear what you are saying. Who you are is speaking too loudly. So it is with writing. The person behind the words speaks louder than the words themselves.

In addition to becoming the person who has something to say, every piece is its own “person” so to speak, meaning every piece has its own voice, and it must be respected as the individual it is. It takes humility to sit before the promise and wait for the genuine voice of the piece to arrive. When, instead of waiting, we charge ahead on sheer volition, we end up with our version of the piece instead of the authentic version. It’s just another form of babble. We may succeed in pulling something together that resembles a poem, an article or even a book, but the piece will still not be genuine. It will only be an imitation of what was trying to be heard, but was trampled to death in our rush.

A computer (i.e. artificial intelligence) can write poetry and prose with an impressive array of vocabulary and sentence structure. However, a computer has nothing to say. It has no desire. No need to say it. What artificial intelligence can spit forth never has the feeling of genuine intelligence because there is no person behind the words.

Likewise, with our own writing, we can end up with lots of words and intelligible sentence structure, but just like a computer, never surpass the level of semantic rearrangement. Semantic dexterity is no sign of intelligence. Intelligence must always include a person. The more substantial the person, the more intelligence will be seen in the piece.

In the end, only if we have first found our own substance do we have anything truly intelligent to say. But then, in addition, we must find a certain patience and humility before the piece itself, and yield to its intelligence, before genius can be heard.

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 Susan Dane
547-49 E. 12th Street
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New York, NY 10009

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