bottledworder

There is a new art form out there for the public to view. It goes something like this:

Text message 1
“Where are you standing right now?”
“Oh! I’m standing right in front of you.”

Text message 2
“He is such a bore.”
“Is he?”

Text message 3
“Here’s my picture making a face.”
[Weirdface snapshot close to front-facing camera]
“You look so cute. LOL”

Blog post 1
April 22. My morning ritual
I got up this morning and made toast. It was too well done at first. So I scraped out the burnt edges. It broke off at the edges and got a really funny shape. So of course I took this pic for the blog.
[Photograph of toast]

Blog post 2
June 22. My post today is going to be about how to depict characters in conflict. Here’s what you do. Pick the situation carefully so that it brings out the deeply hidden similarities and differences in the basic makeup of the characters as well as their suppressed emotions.

Blog post 3
July 22. How do you present situations where characters clash? Read on for five tips on how to depict conflict.

Blog post 4
August 22. Conflict. A crucial element in writing good fiction. Join my group! Like me on Facebook to get exclusive pointers about conflict in fiction.

What is this deluge of words that we have cascading down like Niagara Falls surrounding us, encompassing us, drowning us from all around?

Who is the writer? Who is the publisher? Who is the reader? Who is the strategist, the mediator, the apprentice, the marketer, the production artist, the designer?

Like the one creator of a monotheistic religion at its core, they are all avatars of the one and the same being.

The artist is ME. The artist is Every(wo)man. The artist is us.

This new art form is something I’d like to call the art of the gibberish. Not quite nonsense, not very much related to sense and yet, not easy to pull off at all. The successful gibberish artist draws thousands of followers, hundreds of likes and fans saying pretty much the same thing over and over again.

Repetition and talking about everyday things seems to be key.

Looks easy enough until you actually attempt it yourself.

Fortunately, contrary to alarmist views about how reading and writing is disappearing, there is a predominance of words everywhere in the written form composed by anyone to be read by anyone. Text messages, status updates, blogs, websites, tickers, banners, pamphlets with the potential to be mass-produced and mass distributed.

Granted that the printed word, albeit now commonly seen on-screen, being as it has become of the people, for the people and by the people has lost some of its supreme authority.

But what it has lost as authority it has regained as comfort value. Written words are now something surrounding us everyday, as background voices that slowly become familiar such as when you let your TV run in the background because you are alone.

It’s words that are not always meant to make sense. It’s words that are here because we’ve really made them our own.

That’s the art of the gibberish.