Words Fail Me...or is it me who fails the words?

Why is it, I wonder, that so many of us think that the written word holds more power or importance than the spoken one? Why otherwise would so many people be so interested in reading the blogs of strangers who, were they to encounter them on the street, wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in hearing what they had to say? We'd probably ask them politely to shut up. I dunno, maybe that's just my urban crankiness coming out.

But back to my original thought. Instead of writing, can you imagine would-be bloggers all holding forth on a street corner? They have that in London, don't they? Speakers' Corner. It predates the blog by, oh, centuries. Anybody with anything to say could just drag their little soapbox to the park there, hop up and share their thoughts with the passersby. I wonder how many actually stop and listen. So now we've got the digital equivalent. But there's a big difference between reading something and hearing it spoken out loud. There's a wonderful juiciness to spoken language that infuses it with more meaning and texture than the actual words carry. There's slang that looks foolish on the page (or the screen) that takes on a whole personality when you hear it. Ever gone to a spoken word theater performance? Then you know what I mean.

But then again, I'm a word geek. I write for a living. I think words are unbelievably cool. I cringe when they're mistreated. Which, sad to say, is very, very often. And every time a word is mistreated, somewhere in the universe...absolutely nothing happens