Writing Is Like Music, Cinema, Painting or Photography

I recently complemented a commenter on the site by telling him he’s a genius. By that, I mean he’s a great writer. He’s also a fine thinker, but the two go together. We have lots of fine thinkers on the board, but not all are great writers too. He’s Korean, and Koreans don’t seem to write English spectacularly. I don’t know why, but they are better in visuospatial than in verbal IQ:

Thanks. I found one of the secrets to writing that is engaging is having a musical awareness. Walk down a street and run a tune through your head. Preferably one that you made up. Then just play with it. Volume, pacing, accelerate, decelerate. And volume is key. Change in volume completely changes the tune. Try it. Try Beethoven’s 5th bahm, bahm, bahm, baaahmm.

Quietly. Done quietly it’s nothing. LOL. So here’s the dramatic conclusion to why Koreans don’t write spectacularly. They are raised to be quiet. It shows in their writing.

And we are not even getting into poetry yet. Sure the best poetry is musical, always has been. That’s why it’s so hard to translate. But so is the best prose. We are talking strictly prose here. How do you translate Finnegans Wake into any language other than English? Where do you even begin?

So when you write, your prose is music. Well, it should be, if your aim is artistic. Or at least that’s one way to write

Of course, the best prose is both music and even visual art like painting. I don’t know if it’s cinematic. And the best prose sings like poetry too. It’s all about the rhythm.

I write musically too, and I also write cinematically or like paintings. I get little pictures in my mind when I writing. They just pop up. Then I look for words to describe the paintings or scenes. Sometimes they are pictures like storyboards for a movie or just a painting or picture or frameshot or photo or other visual image. In other cases, it’s like a scene from a movie. Then I search around for the words to describe the scene I just saw in my mind.

When I was 22, a could of friends read my fiction and said it was like Joyce, “painting pictures with words.” My junior college journalism teacher threw me off the paper for “hallucinating with words.”

Please follow and like us:
error3
fb-share-icon20
20
fb-share-icon20

36 thoughts on “Writing Is Like Music, Cinema, Painting or Photography”

      1. thank you so much. my contributions have been slim lately, mostly lurking, but wow your comments section is really really good lately. nice to see people pick up the slack (and then some!)

    1. Nicolás Gómez Dávila! Badass!

      Another pig-disgusting reactionary whose prose I absolutely adore would be William F. Buckley, Jr.

  1. it makes sense! i really think japanese animation has superior character design and quality of animation than american!
    i know both japanese and americans can create good cartoons (talking about their plots) but the fact that visually speaking many american cartoons are inspired by the aesthetic of japanese anime,show us how high quality that style is (american cartoons like avatar)
    in this video these scenes are proof of how good asians are for animation
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbtf1l6d48U

      1. =) yes they are lovely, in addition just a little correction,those arent manga cause manga= japanese comic so if is animation actually is anime 😉

        1. Stupid childish bland and ugly Japanese anime is nothing to be impressed at or about. Those Japs are just insecure white wannabe’s that wouldn’t amount to shit where it not for the Middle Eastern and Caucasian people lol….

        2. yeah dumb egyptian, actually AMERICANS ARE INTERESTED IN JAPANESE ANIME AND SOME AMERICAN TV CHANNELS ARE INTERESTED IN BROADCASTING IT LIKE DRAGON BALL,NARUTO,INUYASHA,SOUL EATER
          LIKEWISE YOU COULD SEE JAPANESE MANGA IN AMERICAN LIBRARIES,HOWEVER NO ONE READ OR WATCH EGYPTIAN STUFF IN AMERICA
          EVEN MANY AMERICAN CARTOONISH IMITATE THE JAPANESE STYLE,SO SHUT UP,AND THEY ACCEPTED AS WELL THE KOREAN SINGER PSY AND THE CHINESE ACTOR JACKIE CHAN,EGYPTIANS DIDNT DUPLICATE IT,YOU ARE JUST A JEALOUS TROLL =P

        3. Let’s be real you pseudo-Spanish, Mexican, secret-Hinduvta male failure, only a minority of Whites are really interested in anything Japanese and we call em Weebo’s here in the West. Only the weirdo’s and Weebo’s (it rhymes) even think about anything Japan, otherwise the Japan fad died away; when I think of the Japanese fad, I think of the European male handbags, a trend soon to die away when the comet hits.

          Booom!! I shouldn’t be replying to you since it’s the greatest honor for you to even get the slightest second of my attention; but then a man’s duty is to provide charity not to act like a she-male women as Japan shintoism teaches us!!

        4. haha if 1% of the 100% of people are interested in china,korea,japan,then less than the 0.0000000001% is interested in egypt (only the few percentage of archeologists in the world) as far as i know egyptians dont do anything trendy or cool,any of the biggest stars or franchises is egyptian,you are SO dumb,as expected from an egyptian 😉

        5. ‘haha if 1% of the 100% of people are interested in china,korea,japan,then less than the 0.0000000001% is interested in egypt (only the few percentage of archeologists in the world) as far as i know egyptians dont do anything trendy or cool,”

          Uhhhh that’s because we don’t have to? The Giza Pyramids alone are worth more then the entirety of the fake ripped off-White Japanese lame ass she-male culture alone. With new theories about the function of megalithic structures, the internet, and shows like Ancient Aliens, interest in the Pyramids are quadrupling on a monumental scale. Jesus christ, I didn’t know Hindu she-male Mexicans were this dumb!!!! You are a dumb ass my good sir!!!

          WE CREATED AND DEFINED ALL THE TRENDS THAT NEEDED TO BE CREATED!!! Just look at Christianity, Greece, Rome and etc still there after surviving for centuries!!! Good god you are an idiot!!!

  2. We are talking strictly prose here. How do you translate Finnegans Wake into any language other than English? Where do you even begin?

    Some Chinese academic just spent eight years translating a third of it into Mandarin and it’s a best seller in China!!

    1. Even better, how do you translate the the esoteric teachings of the hieroglyphics, the lost Ancient Egyptian (Atlantean?) science of harmonic proportions and resonance frequency to North West Europeans or the fact that Pyramids were not tombs but potentially possible crystalline power generators able to solve potentially all of the planets fossil fuel problems?

      You can’t, I should know since the Greeks and Romans already tried doing just that but failed to do so.because of the sheer inbredness of Northern Euro’s. I wonder why ideas such as that aren’t best sellers on the North side of the town, must be due to Northern Euro pettiness and genius.

      1. the past is the past and only archeologists are concerned about it,most people today care about current stuff,like the music,tv shows of today; egypt is in chaos and they dont create nothing interesting for the people of today
        thats why more whites are interested in japan and wish they would be asian (and not egyptian) like this girl who express her desire to be a japanese and not egyptian
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3MwWtyrkBQ

      2. how do you translate the fact that Pyramids were not tombs but potentially possible crystalline power generators able to solve potentially all of the planets fossil fuel problems?

        Not translate, diagnose. You’re clearly mentally ill and suffering from delusions of grandeur. One minute you’ve got your thumb stuck up the white mans arse, the next, you’re sucking on it like a baby. Schizo!

        1. Being a unique walking Museum antique mixed bizarre Med human is such an interesting experience, because of the amazingness of being a fuck product I can go from claiming the best of Western civilization to criticizing it; The Helens would be proud, after all they made it a practice of shitting on the face of the British Isles.

        2. gosh, whats up with all those trolls? that write dumb and uncostructive stuff,well what can we expect from a DUMB LOW IQ egyptian,certainly not an intelligent conversation,less than 1% of people think and care about the things he says,most people care who is the latest big actor or singer;
          millions of people instead of thinking of the ancient cultural legacy of egypt are rather thinking in this=
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcLNteez3c4

        3. =/ i dont understand why a lot of people didnt like her voice,which is parody like there, when i first heard gangnam style the original i wasnt that impressed,when i heard the song for the first time with her,i fell in love with it,i am not sure if the song would be better with her real voice
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw9CALKOvAI

        4. Korean girls are about as real and genuine as the fake plastic lead infested Barbies with a made in China tag; when I say lead infested I mean that in a literal expression too and the made in China goes to how even they can’t even produce real genuine fake dolls, they are all physically inferior and fall apart!!!!!

          Narutoo is a chindog sucking she-male spic failure HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR!!!!

        5. xera i pity you =/ you are just a frustrated egyptian,inside your heart you wish you were asian or european,go to the psychologist,i cant waste more time in you! tomorrow i have a test of accountancy! i need to study and be like the east asians and have 100 on my tests,i dont want to be egyptian like (failure-like)

        6. @Narutoo,

          Is that the same girl? In that video it’s much more like generic pop, not as bad as the female singer above. It’s hard to tell whether some of the background dancers are white or Asian.Have they had that eye surgery?

        7. Aaaaaaaah of course!!!!! I forgot all about the Eye and nose surgery, it’s a good thing you brought them up, I wonder what our friends has to say about that!!!!

        8. SOME ASIANS HAVE BIGGER EYES THAN USUAL,DO ALL EUROPEANS HAVE SUPER LARGE NOSES? AND SUPER BIG EYES OR SUPER SKINNY CHEEKCONES? SOME NOT ALL,LOTS OF WHITES HAVE QUITE SMALL NOSES AND QUITE SMALL EYES AND QUITE HIGH CHEEKBONES,LIKE CARLY RAE JEPSEN,NOT ALL ASIANS ARE LIKE THIS —…—,SOME ARE LIKE THIS –..–

  3. “xera i pity you =/ you are just a frustrated egyptian,inside your heart you wish you were asian or european,go to the psychologist,i cant waste more time in you!”

    No need to pity me good sir!! Your Asian mistress blow-up doll is hwaiting!! She should learn how to play Starcraft. I also hear that they sell cheap dildo’s in China as well, you could put some Anime stuff on it and use it to project your sombrero masculinity!

    “tomorrow i have a test of accountancy! i need to study and be like the east asians and have 100 on my tests,i dont want to be egyptian like (failure-like)”

    Even accounting had a lot of roots in Egypt!!! Great attempt there my friend!!! We Egyptians are not unweird like, un-shemale like, we create accounting not the reverse!!!

  4. i dont want to start nonsense debate,ok,i will just say finally that
    anime is not childish at all,i wouldnt watch it at my 21 years old if it were; the thing is since even in japan the children are mostly the ones who watch cartoons, many mature animes in plot suffer from a childification on looks (the original story is complex,but the tone,mode,character design is adaptated to be acceptable for a child audience)
    with manga (THE JAPANESE COMICS) is the opposite,people of every age read it,thats why mangas are usually darker in violence and sex stuff, even some mangas start quite childish,to attract children audience too,is marketing strategy
    i love HUNTER X HUNTER,my only complaint is that the reboot LOOK quite childish (though some characters look cuter and better looking with younger character designs/looking younger) and thats all
    the older version had the same complexity on plot while looking more mature at the same time
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_nZoQeE76Q

    1. see the slight childification of the reboot,is true that the ANIME seems to be sustained mostly by a child audience,thats why hunter x hunter have one of the hightest anime ratings in japan now,however the plot on its core is mature,plus the manga is mostly teenage in tone,and sell well with people of all ages,anyways i enjoy the story so what,the animation naturally is better in the new version
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3XWkMcSxJg

Leave a Reply to Brengunn Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)