Coloured Glass

blogging is my second best

These days nearly everything I write is in English. Working, blogging, pretty much everything. I thought it was about time to address this weird situation of choosing to write in a foreign language. Oh well, choosing might be stretching it. Writing in Danish would weed out the readership, wouldn't it?

So, I guess it has practical value. Still, I suspect it's partly responsible for the sort of crippling feeling I get once every 5 posts or so. Douglas Hofstadter is famous for linking creativity to "the welcoming of constraints". Limitations in linguistic ability is, however, not a very inspiration-inducing constraint. If Hofstadter is correct, and I think he is, it's only true to the extent you're in absolute command of your basic tools, be it language, a musical instrument or your body. When you feel total control over your means of expression, constraints can be exhilarating challenges, pushing you further than you'd otherwise have gone.

Grasping for words is just frustrating. Not that it's not rewarding. Nobody's forcing my hand, and I'm doing this because it's exciting in ways that writing things you know are perfect is not. It's kissing blindfolded, it's a nighttime walk without a map in a foreign city, it's riding a bike the wrong way on a oneway street, it's doing a Viennese waltz to a Tom Waits song.

You know it's not perfect, and part of you wants it to be - but there's a certain newness to it that seems to be worth the trouble. Especially the occasional 'trying a new word for the first time'. Like trying on new clothes, but much more intimate, almost like trying on a second skin. Letting it roll off, like touching a freshly mowed lawn.

I think I have to stop expecting the same sort of result as when I write in Danish, and start hoping to maybe convey a feeling of, I don't know, foreignness? Estrangement? I'm not sure my English is quite strange enough for that. One strategy would be to stop looking up words when I'm unsure if they exist or not, I suppose. I'll look into that.

So how do people feel about blogging in a foreign language? Bit strange? Retarded? Would you do it?

can I bring my own words?

I quite often seem to bump into the term "creative writing" these days. To be honest, I don't really know what to think. (Mostly) I think I get what it's supposed to mean, and I usually find myself liking the surroundings in which the term appear. Like 'creative writing workshops', which usually means 'people trying to write and think at the same time'.

My initial reaction to hearing "creative writing" is one of "is there another kind?"

And I think my problem with it is that it's an extremely useful term, but still completely rubbish. It made me think of the brilliant definition of creativity from Ken Robinson's equally brilliant presentation at TED  (go watch. It's extraordinary).  He's obviously talking about creativity as an absolute positive, not just the process of creating things - it's not the equivalent of producing. He defines creativity as:

"having original ideas that have value".

Which is beautiful, useful, interesting, thoughtprovoking... and complete rubbish. Leaving aside the exceedingly troubling notion of 'originality' for a moment - no wait, let's not:

So Beethoven wrote symphonies. That's not very original, is it? Haydn wrote 104 before him. Oh, but not that exact symphony, you say? So he basically kept the format and changed the notes? uhm yes... So, what if I just change them some more, is that original and creative? No, you see, Beethoven's is really good different... I don't have to elaborate, do I? originality in arts is so difficult a concept, that to invoke it in defining equally difficult concepts is just... not going anywhere.  Maybe if you try defining part of creativity as "a labour aimed at being perceived as original". Creativity means, among other things, bringing about the feeling of newness to the receiver. Whether it's actually original is besides the point, I think.

[good] creativity is having original ideas [or old ideas just executed better]. So good creativity is having good ideas... that have value.

Ok, "... that have value". This is the biggie. Value how?  This is a planner's thought. The creative person's idea has value if it end up adding to actual brand value, as measured by surveys.

But no one will dispute the creativity of Mozart or Beethoven, right? so, Sir Ken surely includes the vague idea of 'emotional value' in this, and rightfully so. But? Just down the road from "this has emotional value for me" lies "this is art for me" or other relativist rubbish. He's clearly not implying that as long as an idea holds emotional value for someone, it's "the good kind of creativity". We all love our ideas to death, doesn't mean they hold water. So are we to resort to some sort of democratic  value scale? if 10 people find emotional value in an idea, is it creativity at work?  What about 20? That's how it works in real life in many agencies, but surely that's not what Robinson is looking for. That would also imply that James Blunt is a major creative mind, since so many people (of dubious taste) find value in his crap, while Pete Principle or Tony Ogden was not.
What I'm hearing in Robinson's 'that have value' is basically: that are good.

So: [good] creativity is having good ideas that are good. Whoopdidoo.

Which is pretty much what creative writing means, isn't it. Since all acts of writing produce words, and thereby create stuff that wasn't there before, it's all in a sense creative. So what we really mean is that creative writing is writing that is good.
Writing that keeps you reading, that puzzles, that fuels passion, that infuriates, that soothes, that enlightens, that is good.

'Creative writing' sounds like there is such a thing as 'uncreative writing', which there really isn't. We all use words that were there to begin with - or most of them anyway. We're not that original. Creative writing is a little bit of a cop-out that implies that it is ok that we sometimes do uncreative writing, you know, the other kind. Like it's a choice between formal and casual clothes.

But it's not. Writing is either creative - or just plain bad.

kim il-sung rulez

This would be absurdly funny, if it wasn't so, you know, frighteningly depressing.

Do yourself a favour and check out KCNA, the Korean Central News Agency, the official news service for North Korea. For many North Koreans the only source of information on the outside world, for the rest of us a treasury of the weirdest English you'll ever find. Like:

"Visitors at the Mangyongdae Revolutionary Museum ... keenly felt again that the President is a peerlessly great man". And "The U.S. imperialist robbers have stretched their crooked tentacle of crime-woven aggression with wild ambition to make the Korean people their slaves ... The Korean people who rose up in the fight with the U.S. imperialists, with surging indignation, will make the latter meet the fate of forlorn wandering spirits."
Or even: "It is a deserved treatment of Japan, "a political dwarf," which refuses even to honestly repent of its past crimes including extra-large crimes of human rights abuses."

Um... ok. That's some unusual writing, fellas. The KCNA is an important agency for North Korea's diplomatic efforts. But the problem is, that since English was banned for decades, the writers... well they just. Aren't. Very. Good.
Many had to learn English from books with sayings by Kim Il-Sung - translated into English. This article in Slate's Explainer delves into how progress has been made to students now watching movies like The Sound of Music.
Not sure if reading KCNA news makes me feel better or worse about North Korea having nuclear weapons. I'll try not be "human scum", I guess, in order to avoid "the terrifying and righteous wrath of the immortal revolutionary heroes". I recommend you do the same.

at dawn sharahzad shall hang

Needing a thick volume for a mundane task, I got Douglas Hofstadter's Le Ton beau de Marot down from the shelf. I'd forgotten how intriguing that book is. Everyone just remotely interested in language and, specifically, the concept of translation, should read it.
It's a very thoughtprovoking study that spans from in-depth discussions on how to translate baroque French to searching for the source of linguistic creativity in general.
One of the parts I really liked is a bit on things that can't be translated - nuances that are lost, elements of form that are inherently tied to a specific language, so on. Some of the material Hofstadter uses absolutely blew my mind - like Giuseppe Varaldo's book All'alba Sharahzad andrà ammazzata. I bought it after reading Hofstadter's book the first time a few years ago, and it's simply stunning: Varaldo gives retellings of 50 masterpieces of world literature - in the form of monovocalic sonnets! - that's right, he gives a synopsis of Dante's Inferno in a 14-line Italian sonnet, with correct rhyme and meter ... using only one vowel! - in the case of the "Inferno", it's "e". Arabian nights is done using 'a' as the only vowel. Try translating that.
Anyway, go read that Hofstadter book already. You won't regret it. Except maybe for the bits about baroque French.

sense and sensibility

When you work with language as a profession, few things are more frustrating than the fact that language debate is always dominated by raging prescriptivists - the people that want to tell you how you should use language; rules and regulations make for easy headlines, but language is a complex business.

Descriptivists - linguists who think it's more worthwhile to examine how language is used and to compare it to the rules we do have than making up new rules - are rarely making themselves heard at the same volume.

One of the best blogs around for descriptivist commentary on current language issues is the Language Log, home of linguists Geoff Pullum and Mark Liberman. Go check it out.

Among the more entertaining reads: this piece explaining why Dan Brown is "one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature". Good, geeky fun.
And lots of links to other parts of their ongoing crusade against the poor writing in Brown's novels.