Verba Volant /

Scripta Manent

=

Spoken words fly away /

but writing remains 

via The Treehouse  – Naomi Wolf 

“…This is one of the … words. Its roots sink deep and stretch out far…
There is a great moving force therein.

A great moving force and yet again, only a lost sound.

It is a lost sound, when somewhere – in that dark windowless room – and at some time – in those days without the power of message – the lips of a nameless, soon-to-be-forgotten [person]…“

 via Martin Buber’s Legend’s of The Baal Shem Tov

With these two contrasting quotes I am picturing words and letters strapped and tied and playing gently on a page…and a whole lot of others, like autumn leaves, fluttering away into us and the universe… 

I started this post just to record these two quotes – but it got me thinking… 

As I tell Oral tales I also, of course, believe in the value and importance of spoken words – precisely because they do fly! I love the feeling as they fly through you, around you and the group of listeners – how they can fly all around the world, into people and around then, and that people can carry them for years and pass them on…and more…

But at this point in time, I am also seeing that I would like to learn the discipline of writing / recording things so that they also have a different type of tangibility…the world of the acoustic space may be upon us, but I for one am still grappling with it…and how to make it real for people when I am not physically there, telling a story…

At the same time as Naomi’s father’s words struck me – write it down – so do Buber’s – about grasping for a lost sound faintly echoing from beyond…some nameless faceless person, and yet even so, their spoken words remain with them…

On the digital elements – the sharing part – where you can do both…I don’t even know what to say…I play with various media – like this blog, like websites, like digital stories…- I am excited by it all, and  very cautious. It is beautiful and dangerous…(see people to read on all this in 1st comment below)

I will continue to write and to tell and play with new media…perhaps that is how you both can be grounded and fly?

 

PS Thanks too to Lisa Robert’s for this weeks writing encouragement and exercise – and Gabi…anyone who knows how to hold me accountable for my writing and also, with suggestions on being disciplined around it, please let me know! 

 Image (c) Laszlo Moholy Nagy 1926

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 8:59 pm and is filed under digital storytelling, musings, questions, quotes, stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.