Language Inflation

My New Year’s resolution:

1) I am going to fight the language inflation and
2) I will attempt to stop swearing….

Somebody said: If we use the word awesome to describe a hat, what word will we use when we encounter the great wall of China!
…or a mosque in Istanbul or Notre Dame in Paris…..or falling in love…

It seems to me that language inflation is in fact a lowering of our standards because by using only a few favorite words we are making do with a lot less words. More cluster bomb than precision sniper…
To say that one is not pleased used to carry a lot of weight – now the minimum seems to be outraged or pissed off…The average person’s vocabulary has shrunk to a frightening standard these days and that’s why I shall carry a thesaurus with me next year. I shall attempt to name the world around me with the proper words…with precision and meaning.

We hear it all around us: things just aren’t nice or good anymore, they have to be “f***ing great”, they are not bad, they are “damn terrible”. Gratuitous swearing is just admitting to a lack of words. I shall treat language like a knife, and be precise in the words that convey my meaning. The more precise I become the less necessary swearing will be. Also, let’s face it….it was cool to swear 30 years ago because it really upset parents, grandparents! and teachers….now it is so commonplace that I find it shocking when a person is well spoken and precise and clear – without a single swear word…..

Traffic Music

Yesterday I ran errants while listening to “In the Arms of Love” in the car. Traffic seemed to move in slow motion – like the satellites orbiting around earth in the movie “2001”. It felt like I was in a movie or in a mind-altered space, a very friendly altered space….it was cool I tell you….I have to try that again…..

Great Flamenco Guitar

“Accelerating the Future” is the theme of new Infinity/Nissan advertisements. What does that mean? Isn’t it too fast already? You leave home and by the time you get to work everything has changed already. The entire human gnome has been put on an iPod, Turkey might be part of Europe soon (since the other side of the Bosporus is ASIA – does that mean Europe will soon encroach on Asia??), and computers and mobile phones are basically outdated as soon as you have brought them home…..

At least a great flamenco guitar is a great flamenco guitar is a great flamenco guitar.

That reminds me. I still have not recorded my new Lester DeVoe Flamenco Negra, but I have been playing it every day and I am still in love with it. You will hear on my next recording – sometime in 2004 probably….

After several months of feeling that I am empty and that there is not another song in me – I have written a handful of new songs which I hope to start recording next spring. I will use the new guitar and probably a whole new rig with a new Mac running OSX (which I love!) and the new HD system from ProTools.

You are more than welcome!
What is more than welcome?
What is beyond welcome?
Does it get even more warm and fuzzy there?
Or does it turn on you and is it really quite awful and not welcome at all.
Angst, aggression? Good or bad?
What is more than welcome?

More Detail

It is amazing to me how I seem to discover the right book at just the time that I am ready for it. (I have also felt that way about music and art, discovering new sounds and sights in a seemingly purposeful progression….)

Each of these books and the knowledge found in them represents to me a piece of the puzzle, a grand mosaic picture which becomes more detailed as I grow older. In areas where a larger mosaic stone did fine a decade ago, I have since found the need to replace this one stone with several small ones – creating more detail…..

Of course there are many areas of my personal picture, my universe which are still quite hazy and which I would like to fill in over the next decades, but I assume that will come in time….I know that I owe so much to books and their authors…and the musicians and painters and so on…..Well hey! Thanks!