Ye Fyne Arte of Spelling

Hi! You’ve just been enchanted.

So, I could drag you off to a sweat lodge (extreme circumstance, but done, basically safely). Or stuff a peyote button in your gob (yay, psychaedelics). But I think I’m going to go through my preferred route:

Writing.

I’m talking lines and squiggles and you are taking each one, ascribing it a sound, then combining the sounds together into words and then sentences and then paragraphs and by that point, you’re mind is in a light meditative trance and you are hallucinating meaning.

If I’m to write about bacon, and I’m doing my job, you can scent the sizzle of the fat as the heat hits the strip. That mix of brown sugar and salt that makes those crispy piece just pop in your mouth.

And if I suddenly tell you that bacon came from “long pork”, those of you who know what “long pork” is would feel a sudden shudder of horror.

All due to words on a page.

The Responsible Writer’s Creed

I’m not here to talk about me, though.

Once upon a time, the queer, the weird, the generally off were in control of their arts. They were usually poor by society standard, but often well-loved because they changed people’s lives.

This changed, I would argue, when the notion of ‘industrialization’ came to the forefront of the imagination of some useless turds with money.

Lately, I’ve run into people who are thoroughly programmed by the writing around them. They repeat exactly the same arguments over and over again. It’s obviously a ‘spell’, in the classic sense, in that it alters people in a meaningful way and they can’t get out of it.

My job’s becoming more apparent. How to construct counter-spells.

What I’ve learned so far:

• Take your time to set up the foundation
• Disrupt the basic narrative of the spell they are under
• Tease out common human threads (that exist regardless of the spell)
• Appeal to their humanity
• Provide a defense against re-infection

There are people out there who dedicate their time, usually through work, to breaking the will of their fellow humans so that they can be pushed or pulled in directions they normally wouldn’t want to go. It’s, frankly, disgusting and quite horrific to watch.

Good people, with real issues, tied up by the whims of people with ill intent.

So, let’s push back. Get people interacting with video games and novels and comics and good food. Fix the problems they can’t even voice because others stole their voice and replaced it with poisoned words.