The 2am Lover of Words.

What is the written word ?

Are you the 2am lover of the written word ?

Have you ever wondered that ?

Have you ever really sat and wondered what the world would be like if the written language in all its forms did not exist ?

Humour me perchance.

 Stop and just process what the world would look like now.

Is your mind blown yet ?

The world would be so very different, almost unimaginably so I believe.

Look around , all the inventions featured the use of the word whether spoken or written in order to facilitate their creation.

 What would the Cradle of Civilization look like had someone not scrawled symbols in the dirt or on the skins of animals ?

Would the Pyramids be built ?

Would Rome have reached is zenith without skilled orators & philosophers jotting down their abstract thoughts to shine forth as a beacon of hope ?

What shape would any of the modern treaties taken, were it not for written word to be the vehicle that carried forth the blossoming nation's hopes and dreams ?

And what of the ideas of Edison, Tesla and Steve Jobs ?

Words are a link in the chain of humanity that cannot be broken, nay more than that, it is as though words ARE the chain that helps pull humanity forwards.

Now , you may wonder why I would ask such an abstract question.

I could counter with, why not ?!!

I ask this question, which in truth is more a personal musing than a question that could be answered definitively, as it has been weighing heavily on me the last little while.

I have decided that I should write more frequently and , in reaching that decision , I searched the reaches of my mind for what relationship I had with words.

And it struck me then, that who am I to presume it is I who have the relationship with word and not that word has chosen me as it's sometimes lover ?

 Am  I no more than it's 2 am tryst, important only in my own inflated self reflection  ?

The relationship is fickle, as two lovers who constantly bicker but cannot bear to part.

Was I no more than a reflection of all those who passed before in history , just a husk of wheat that when flayed it is cast to the wind ?

And did all those writers and creators who went before me realise that, like I , we are but swimmers out of our depth & held afloat by a power we know not how to describe.

An example can not be more precise than the dearth that is the writers block.


You sit in the moment and find the spark is lost. You search lovingly,longingly for your long lost lover within the depths of your conscience.

You sit perplexed.

Time, that abstract concept, does the impossible and stands still.


As though a painter who lashes his freshly dipped brush across a canvas only to find no paint is kissing the canvas of your page.

How can that be ?

Your paint palette is full,you know what you are to paint and yet......

Nothingness.

Or your strokes are rough and unclear.

The colour just not quite right, screaming at you to start again.


Anger settles in and in defiance you throw away your brush , not noticing the splashes of imagination that twinkle briefly in the ether before slinking back into the recesses of your mind.

You give up in disgust, the fire dampened and the clouds of self doubt roll in to cover the sun.


And thus, your writing sits, abandoned and growing cold as a beggar on a street corner in winter.

Forgotten.

Forlorn.

The world passes it by.


And yet at other times , words come at you in a rush.

A raging river crashing through the recesses of your mind, pulsating, growing in momentum and building as they get closer to the surface.

And all you need to do is snap them up as they float across the surface of your mind, as a trout feasts upon the insects on a lazy summer afternoon.

They clamour for attention, each word jumping across the other demanding to be heard and spread across the canvas of your page.

Time becomes non existent, minutes, hours and days flow by in the merest fractions tho it seems.
You are bound by the words that course through you, story lines, characters, events and settings build upon each other as tho they existed forever within your grasp.

And in this moment, that glorious moment, there is felt something almost spiritual between the writer and the word. As though they are but one , they are both the imagined and the un-imagined all at once.

There passes that moment of time where there is no separation between the story & the story teller, two lovers so entwined & enmeshed that neither can bare to separate for fear of death.


Until finally, exhausted and sated , the two lovers uncouple. No energy remains and all that is left is the remnants of a moment in time that seems so real but does not exist.

That is my relationship with words.

Exhausting.

Exhilarating.

Two opposite sides of a coin, that as an addict begs for their fix, so I could not bare to live without despite the anguish and uncertainty it burdens me with.

I am that 2 am lover that word loves to call, knowing I will never turn it down no matter how poorly it treats me.

Are you also a 2 am lover of words ?

Despite what we may pretend, there is no other option with the written word. It ebbs and flows within us all and none can know when it will reappear to cause that sweet,sweet chaos we all love.

So what is the word ?

You tell me, for I am just the vehicle that carries words out into the world.

An honour I am utterly unworthy of.

:)

Locky J