Thursday, July 5, 2012

10 o'clock Rants into the Void

     As I sit here researching and writing my next post, I begin to notice a trend in my own writing.  I am insecure about adding a voice to my writing.  And I am having flashbacks to all the classes I took where I had to write an essay.  To write a technical paper, it seemed, you had to take all the life out your writing.  No longer could you be aware that you were writing for an audience, you could could only treat the reader like a stone being.  And it makes no damn sense.
     There is so much technical jargon that it's hard to make an essay on thermodynamics sound interesting.  And most of those words are over saturated in syllables or straight up Greek.  But the Japanese and Shakespeare have proven that you can take syllables and make them sound beautiful.  Why can't a technical paper be as beautiful as the science it tries to describe?  Why can't we marvel at the artistry of technical writing that is as simple as it is complex like the molecules it describes?  Science is an art, damn-it.  It is an art technically mastered by some and emotionally mastered by others.  Some can describe a complex idea and make it into a household term.  Others seem to cloud their own thoughts behind an impenetrable wall of words.  They need to prove to the world that smartest person in the room is the one with the one with the most syllables.
     Is this a pledge to the people who might stumble upon this?  HA!  You fucking wish it was.  To actually set out to be the most artistic writer of technical science is. . . silly, maybe?  Perhaps egotistical.  Here I sit, though, a man educated by the papers of others before me, and all I really know is what I like.  And those are the people I want to strive to be.  I want to write stuff that runs, no, sprints past your eyes and lodges itself directly into your brain.  I want to stay away from the pompous writing of Ph. D's that have their heads so far up their own ass it amazes us they can even see.  I can only hope that I can stay away from needlessly obscuring my words with meaningless, mindless bullshit.
     I was never allowed to write about extremely explosive materials in a way that could make the reader smile.  It could've offended someone.  But now I'm screaming into a vacuum, in the hopes that someone might here me.  It feels like I have to shake off the voices of others to find my own voice.  Passion and emotion must find their way back into this writing.  And really, who became interested in science because it's a lifeless wreck?
     Math takes intangible and inexpressible ideas and presents them to us visually.  Physics gives these numbers reality and depth.  Each of the sciences gives the numbers something more, until they are something we can hold and caress.  Chemistry gives energy, biology gives life.  Anatomy gives us something to look at and admire, astronomy gives us goals to shoot for.  So why should the writing be devoid of life, when science is not?

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