Day 15 - Literary Quotation

"Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary." - Mark Twain

As an English major I thought this entry would be an easy one, but that was not the case. When I think of literature I do not automatically think of novels or books, perhaps not even just poems or plays. I think about the figures behind these works, as probably pointless as that is given how I feel about the way literature should exist, and while I am not an unabashed fan of Mark Twain this quote I think resonates both in a literary sense and in a personal sense. For me it speaks about purity, perhaps a purity of experience, perhaps a purity of existence. I have been told on numerous occasions that I need to be more openly emotional, and I suppose I understand that well enough but when I make these attempts I cannot help but feel all the more depressed about whatever facade I am putting on in order to appease whoever needs appeasing. It is simply inauthentic, and I'm only one for this type of false authenticity if it is done knowingly to comment on something.

Actually, I have trouble with the concept of emotions entirely. They exist, or at least I believe them to exist independently of the social construct that other ideas which we tie to emotions are said to exist, but I feel as if the communication process becomes a way of feigning emotion rather than communicating. I wrote in earlier entries that I don't really understand, or don't process as well, the intricacies of the way communication works. On a theoretical level I understand it, perhaps may even be able to manipulate it at times, but on a practical level I don't understand it at all. So when I realize that I am having emotional reaction, positive or negative to use binary talk, I become aware of it and am, at least momentarily, surprised. Momentarily happy even, sometimes regardless of circumstance. It's this feeling of freedom that most people I know exude and I don't, but I hope to at some point.

But I, slightly, digress. There is a quote in I'm Not There that talks about Bale's version of Dylan making "finger pointing songs" and turning them out like ticker tape. He takes ideas that we all have but puts them in words. In a way I think all great literature, novels, songs, film, games, plays, poems, act in this way. They make us aware. And this quote, well it's not one that I will likely ever forget because it does, so wonderfully, capture a thought that I always knew but never spoke. Or never framed. It asks me to see myself and to see others, to look at the divides and further create an identity, a relation to my world. For that I thank Mark Twain, and more importantly I thank literature.

Thanks for reading.

Tomorrow's Topic: Dream House

Rich