What I Do When I Read Medium
I once read a book that I had seen on and off again. The first time was in a whirling bookstand in a bookstore near Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco. It was a hard cover, basically white text on black background. I avoided buying it, but always wanted to read it because books speak to me through their covers. I feel like “That’s what I am supposed to read today.” Besides, I am an artist, the artistry of illustrating the connection of the words inside to an image that represents them is something I adore. It’s a process I engage in often illuminating my own works and even for agencies like The San Francisco Opera. Covers can set the mood. They can tell you the secrets that you don’t fully appreciate until you’ve finished the work. A cover should tell the truth. A picture tells a thousand words, which as you may know, writers among you, this is not a vast amount. A cover can be a visual poem of the greater work. Here is my libretto cover for the opera Dead Man Walking.
Here is my cover for the opera Arsace II.
Here are covers for two of my books:
So, you can see that I opted for what I thought were apt images and fonts to both communicate the themes and whet the aesthetic appetites of my readers. After all, to me, reading should be an aesthetic experience. This brings me back to my original book, Being and Time. It wasn’t until years later that I finally bought the book as a soft cover, now as a more Zen-like cover in a bookshop along Polk Street known for its more spiritual presence than something philosophical or general. The philosophy section was small, but I found the book again and knew I had to have it. I bought and spent hours trying to figure out what he was saying. Many words had to be looked up. Dasein was one of the most important and trickiest. But also as with the words if the title of a book there too is an art/science to how they illustrate the theme or main point of the work.
Words as you readers know is often the make or break of communicating well and interestingly. Being and Time is fascinating because it is a manifestation of the point Heidegger is trying to make. At least for me, he made me realize the concept of everything happening at once, an infinite number of conversations, ideas in peoples’ heads, actions, reactions, events a la moment. His prose made me see and feel his thesis. That to me is genius. It was an incredible realization. He was talking about existence and time themselves. I guess you could call it consciousness, but of course most of us are not nor can we be conscious of everything. His work lead me to other great works of the philosophical genre, Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, more accessible, and his Being and Nothingness are further examples of writing as affect.
The book I would like to get to as my point for this piece, which is what I do when I read Medium. Medium is an opportunity to look at words put together. How do they rest against each other and shimmy. Do they smile back or ignore. Words are a map of the world, the means we use to communicate meaning and experience. They often represent who we are. I am turned on by the positive energy and clarity of Medium writers. They seem to follow a formula that they are all aware of and they manage to illustrate moments by capturing our minds through thoughts. I have found so many works here to be of interest and I like being able to be connected to the work and writers as I can highlight and leave comments here as an interactive process vs. newspapers that require subscriptions, not unlike Medium, but where the comments seem to be much more elevated and kind.
It’s more like a Tribe of like-minded people.
This brings me to where the idea for this piece came. Meghan Ward got mad at me for nitpicking one of her stories. My intention was to correct for perfection, what is usually perfect. She could consider my comment, make the change, or ignore me, even delete me after making the correction.
We don’t write in a vacuum. We shouldn’t be so averse to criticism. After all, writing is moving forward. So, beyond this, I want to talk about a book that changed or affirmed the way I look at words. Wittgenstein wrote Philosophical Grammar, which is a work that implements the thinking process while writing or reading. Everything in grammar is like a way to say something. A period does something. One word has denotations and connotations. Next to another word it has more. The poetry of Sylvia Plath illustrates the capacity to make relevant all connotations and denotations of words in and among themselves. She operates poems like three-dimensional chessboards. Words in their full expanse relating to other words in the poem in their full expanse, again like the thesis of Being and Time, where everything is interconnected. Sadly, for Plath, she blames men for her unhappiness, when what she could do with words was absolute genius and men, per se, are immaterial, which could be said of women too. Co-dependency is not our true purpose. Her husband was a weakling. He had a responsibility to her. He will never be anyone compared to her.
Anyway, back to the book and what I do when I read Medium. I am the kind of guy who defines every word in a poem and if I had time, prose works. I feel the dictionary allows for common ground. We can come to a decision about the meaning of words and with grammar we can understand what they mean in a sentence, paragraph, and story. I like to share how one person’s work affects me. I like to run my fingers through a story and feel the fabric against my skin. I am often in love with the writers. I am jealous of their experiences and minds. I learn from them.
Here is an idea of what Wittgenstein’s book Philosophical Grammar is like. From Part 1:
“The Proposition and its Sense.” He says, “1 How can one talk about ‘understanding’ and ‘not understanding’ a proposition? Surely it’s not a proposition until it’s understood?”
By definition, a proposition is a plan suggested for acceptance; a proposal. And so yes a proposition, which is a plan, proposal, matter, task, offer has to be understood otherwise the implication is that it is not something someone else can see as a way forward, something that is given to be agreed with, a matter that can been seen by a third party as mattering, or to be carried out. Even to talk about a proposition, the idea has to be understood.
Here is another example,
“‘A sentence in a code: at what moment of translating does understanding begin?’
“The words of a sentence are arbitrary; so I replace them with letters. But now I cannot immediately think the sense of the sentence in the new expression.
“The notion that we can only imperfectly exhibit our understanding: the expression of understanding has something missing that is essentially inexpressible. But, in that case it makes no sense to speak of a more complete expression,” (Wittgenstein).
What this means is there is a sentence in a code. Something, which is the code engulfs the sentence. And where you translate the words in the code this is the process of understanding. The words are arbitrary in a sentence, so he replaces them with letters, but then he loses meaning because the words themselves are not meaningful as letters but as words in a sentence.There is a loss to the memory of the words formerly as definable language.
Then he talks about the imperfection of exhibited understanding. Where when we express understanding, something is missing that is in essence inexpressible. But, amid the inexpressible, it makes no sense to say there is a better, more fuller expression.
So, Wittgenstein addresses the logic of statements/terms. There is a heady game in this. That’s what I do when I read. I question the meaning of what is posed.
Similarly, the other day, a woman proposed the idea that “You’re Likely to be a Sociopath if you won’t wear a mask,” (Morris). This was a brilliant idea. I was just curious if it was just an idea, a connection she made, or a connection that was tested and verified. She stated the fact that some “People who refuse to wear masks and protest any measures put in place to keep people safe are highly dangerous, not just because they are more likely to pass on coronavirus to others, but because their behavior is a warning sign to others that they may be a possible sociopath.” She gave the behaviors of sociopaths and people who won’t wear masks. She cites that Healthline gave tips for maintaining relationships with sociopaths.
What do you like about Medium? What do you like to do here?
