Some words on writing.

I guess you can't blame writers. Or maybe you can. This is a generalization, of course, but it seems today that writing--that words--have lost their passion, their meaning, their uniqueness and their bite. So much is drivel--a stringing together of cliches and fractured phrases or made-up words because people are too indifferent to protest the mongrelization of language. Prediction: we will hear the non-word "curation" in the near future almost as frequently as we now hear "robust." If I had a dime every time I hear something that appalls me--robust, engagement, very uniqueness and so on, I'd have a bunch of dimes now.

Years ago I taught an advertising class at the School of Visual Arts. I found a blues lyric that I thought was expressive and since then I've used it as an example of writing that makes you feel and think--writing that doesn't just waft over you like industrial jello. The blues writer was describing how sad he is, he sang: "It's raining soup and all I have is a fork."