Storytellersunplugged

Well, it isn’t Marmaduke anymore. Last month’s name-the-baby contest brought in some choice selections. If you don’t know who Marmaduke is – was – I’ll explain in a moment, but first the re-christening.

Had some great finalists, including: Eustace, Ebeneezer, Dousenberry, Clementine (requires early sexual reassignment surgery), Billy Bob, Felix, Thor and Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-
fried-digger-dingle-dangle-dongle-dungle-
burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-
banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-
knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer
-spelterwasser-kurstlich-himbleeisen-
bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-
nürnburger-bratwustle-gerspurten-mitz-
weimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-
shönedanker-kalbsfleisch-mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm (yes, that’s the fictional composer from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, thanks to Mark). I came to favor an entry from West Virginia, however. Kelly Barker’s “Maverick” wins the honor for its tone and sexual ambiguity (an example should fit all readers, right?). This will also please Julie in Phoenix who wants to keep Baby M. And if you think these strain credibility, I once ran across a thesis titled “Pause Patterns in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama” by Ants Oras and Dingle Foot. Ants and Dingle. They had to meet.

Maverick (nee Marmaduke), then, is you, me and everyone else reading this column: the prototype human being growing up and acquiring language. The reason I had to invent a stand-in for us is because three columns ago I tackled the ambitious challenge of defining how we develop and use style in writing fiction. Non-fiction about fiction. Lots of ways to get a handle on styles, but the way that works for me is to recognize three natural divisions in language. I called them the language of emotions, the language of things and events, and the language of ideas. Here are direct links to the previous essays [THOMAS SULLIVAN: SPIDERS AND SPUDS and THOMAS SULLIVAN: HORNED OWLS & OTHER HORNY BEASTS and THOMAS SULLIVAN: NAME THE BABY]. This is the fourth and final essay, in which I’ll give a simple definition of the language of ideas, then lay out how all three lingos feed back into the genres and writing in general.

So, back to Maverick. You’ll recall that the language of emotions is the most natural form of expression, maybe even prenatal, and that Baby M used it as we all do to vent our feelings at whatever stage of life. And then Baby M glommed onto the most universal language, the nouns and verbs of reality, and used them to interact with all the basics of daily living. That language of things and events didn’t replace the need for venting feelings as he/she grew up – you don’t have to be wet, naked and screaming to use the language of emotions (although it makes a helluva evening if you’re on a date). Emotional expression simply merges with the more codified and ordered language of things and events.

Likewise, the third language has been sneaking in there as the teen years approach. This one is a little tougher, because it is abstract. The language of ideas has to be imagined. By nature intangible, it has no physical referents. It has other distinguishing characteristics. Unlike the language of emotions, which is very personal, pure idea expressions can stand apart from you intellectually. Unlike the language of things and events, you aren’t interacting with specific sensory input. Ideas form in the vacuum of a broom closet with the door shut tight in an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. Ideas may knit together the worlds of your emotions and senses, but they don’t feed directly off them. You can’t see “freedom” or touch “loyalty” or taste “economy.” Okay, we can all smell “politics,” but that’s a figure of speech. So ideas have to solo in the dark of your mind. You need terms and processes for them and you have to sweat a little to carry them very far. They don’t come as easy as, “Oh, look, there’s a blue donkey playing a steam calliope.”

For that reason, some folks don’t dwell much on ideas. They’re called men, right? Not really. But there are gender preferences, it seems. Hey, I’m not steppin’ in that mine field; an idea is an idea whether it’s “love” and “sincerity” or “competition” and “heroics.” The preferences (biases) are ingrained as classical stereotypes in our society, though, often arranged according to an intellectual yardstick. I remember hearing somewhere when I was very young that small people talk about people, medium size people talk about things, and big people talk about ideas. Now I think of that as just another way to address the three languages in all of us.

None of us is a purebred of emotions, things and events, or ideas. It comes down to emphasis in our lives. Very seldom does any one of those languages get used entirely by itself. To do so is more like a caricature of a human being. But the emphasis, the proportion, the tendency to use one over the other…that’s a big-time identifier. Incorrigible idea people are cold and geeky and we give them glasses with Coke-bottle lenses and a pocket caddy. The pure beautician type is seen as arrested development all about vanity and feelings as she files her nails, chomps her gum, and gossips. Or to put both caricatures in one setting: the Queen of the Cheerleaders, despite her rah-rahs for the team, is seen as an exhibitionist all about herself and her feelings (emotions), just as the King of the Football Team is seen as all about himself and his deeds (events). Extremes in a vacuum. They don’t exist in reality, but they tend to exist as…are you ready for this, ideas.

We choose when and where to be each of those three aspects of ourselves, and we use the three languages to do it.

Phew! Am I still writing to anyone? Have you caught me in my own mirror yet? Time to get out of Dodge…or just dodge. Safer to talk about Baby M. To wit…

Maverick (sexless) may turn out to be either an abstract whiz or a dolt whose eyes glaze over when he/she hears the word “think.” At any rate, this is where life makes the big cut. Do we simply work on the line 9 to 5, belly up to the bar till 7, then fade to upholstery and TV until stupor puts us down for the night, or do our lives contain a greater balance of scheming, problem-solving, bullshitting, philosophizing (redundant?), and relating to other humans in intellectual and emotional ways? No pure types here, of course, but the degrees determine who we are. Idea people tend to go to college. Idea people tend to work idea jobs. Idea people drink for different reasons than fun people who just feel or like to not feel, as in numb. Idea people can be boring if they are just idea people.

Once that divide is made between whether we are basically emotional people, thing and event people, or idea people, the social order changes, career paths change, the pool of potential relationships changes. Maverick finds his/her comfort zone and hunkers down. He/she may be a happy SOB driving a semi, or a shmoozer who can sell you a life insurance policy if you look at them twice across a crowded room, or a scowling string theorist who stares through you on the way to…damn, where was I going before I got that epiphany about 5-D braneworld black holes and gamma rays? The three languages will tend to follow and flow out of the needs of what you do. But we’re interested in books and stories here. Where do reading and writing come into it? Whichever person you are, if you read, what do you look for, what do you like and why? If you write, how do you reach the people you want to connect with? What personal resources do you draw on and deliberately shape? Who are your muses?

And you know what? My muse just kicked me in the shins and said, “Enough already.” No way I’m going to get the rest of it out in this column. So it ain’t my last essay on the subject (no hissing, please) after all. I need a fifth column (not that Fifth Column). Can’t understand how I ever covered this as part of a one-hour speech. I must’ve sounded like an auctioneer.

Thanks for reading. Your thoughts are welcome and your attention valued.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan