CAPTURING LIFE ON THE PAGE

IS CAPTURING THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE IN WORDS ON THE PAGE A FUTILE PURSUIT?

In his paper on operator's manuals, James Paradis makes a claim that by the very nature of their medium, manuals and instructions cannot possibly account for the entire range of experiences that can happen in the real world. It's a severe limit of the medium, indeed. There are so many variables in our busy and random world, especially so in places like construction sites, where the nailguns being referenced in Paradis's essay were being used. In attempting and failing to account for the possible dangers of the tools, the manual writers for the respective studgun companies allowed human life to fall through the cracks. It's certainly appropriate that these mistakes were legislated! That the manuals were written by tradesmen first and barely scrutinized before publishing is unsettling, and makes one wonder how many other companies cut similar corners in making safety warnings for their products.
    However, I'm not so confident that Paradis' perspective on capturing the world into text is entirely correct. The way he writes that user manuals can't possibly account for all of the variables in a real work environment makes Paradis sound downright sympathetic to the people responsible for putting out dangerous tools without appropriate warnings. Is it truly impossible, as Paradis says, to take even a narrow snapshot of the greater world and put it on the page? Surely, it can't be. If that option was so entirely off the table, then people wouldn't be spending as much time as they do on writing as a medium. It's the job of any artist, no matter the medium, to try to capture life's ephemera as best they can. It's not an easy task, indeed, but it's far from impossible. This is why people get degrees in the arts. Perhaps it's not that we should consider this kind of thoroughness in writing impossible; we must instead understand that even the most seemingly innocuous forms of communication should be done by those who really know what they're doing.
    
    I could talk for hours about my journey as a fiction writer in attempting to do just what Paradis says is impossible: catching lightning in a bottle in the form of the living, breathing world and putting it to paper. But, for the sake of keeping out of my own head, let's take a look at other mediums. In particular, the visual. I'll attach to this post a couple of pieces that have delivered something so much more than the shapes and colors on the screen.

Savanna Judd. QuikTrip In Green.

This scene invokes a lot more senses than the visual. In its surreality, it becomes somehow even more real. The jungle-like foliage and mystery of the circumstances capture how lost one feels in walking into a quick-stop gas station shop–the familiarity, because they're all so similar, combined with the looming mystery that comes from them all being just different enough that you won't be able to find the bathroom right away, no matter how hard you try. The space is cramped, and one wonders how it's even possible to move around among the shelves. When I look at this piece, I feel the sensations attached to the place without being in it at all.

 Andrey Surnov. Evening Traffic 1.

 

This image gives me chills. The lighting is breathtaking, in particular the way the clouds are backlit. Once again, the further from reality that this painting gets, the more it gets close to how the context it captures actually feels. The horizon is hard to make out, the highlights of the road underfoot brighter than anything else. One feels small, but they also feel the sort of excitement one feels at the beginning or end of a long trip. Are we coming home? Going somewhere else? Either way, in this moment, this vertical slice, we're floating with everyone else on this road.

All in all, it seems dismissive to say that any medium is incapable of capturing the reality of the human condition. So many people put their blood, sweat, and tears into getting the feelings that they have onto paper so that they can share them with others. In some ways, experiencing someone's art is the closest one can ever get to truly understanding what the world looks like through another's eyes. It's not easy to capture life's ephemera or complexities, no, but it's very much doable in many kinds of mediums. It just takes a skillful hand.
What are some works that you've experienced that have made you feel something more deep than the sensory details it provided? Do you think that certain mediums work better for such experiences? Movies? Games? Paintings? Books? Why? What's a feeling or a moment that you think is truly impossible to capture in art?
Do you think it's possible to capture the human experience in a satisfying way? More importantly, do you think you could do it?

A bloggy beginning

For those of you who are curious about this select some guy out of hundreds of other some guys in the school, here's a more thorough intro for me:

I've got about a billion different hobbies at any given time. My attention span is short, and my creativity is always looking for something new to glom onto. However, the major constants for me have always been drawing, writing, and playing video games. I always come back to those. Because of the fact that, of those, writing is the only that I can consider myself measurably decent at, I'm pursuing an English degree. This class is being taken alongside fiction writing classes, because my first love is and always has been prose. I've written a handful of novel-length works of fiction, one of which I'm working on cleaning up until it's actually in a state that can be published. While I was writing said work-in-progress novel, my average words per minute was 27, and words per day was about 3,000.

    So, then, why technical writing? I'm a realistic person. I know that being a novelist isn't in the cards for most aspiring writers, and even if it were, I know that writing novels doesn't pay the bills unless you are wildly successful. So, while I'm working on getting my degree, I want to take stops to make sure I'm developing the sort of writing skills that will make me useful outside of my own creative pursuits. This class is perfect for that; it's even more oriented towards office work than I expected it to be, and I'm just about sure that it'll help me get a job at some point. At least, a job that doesn't involve washing dishes and being yelled at for slow sandwich deliveries. Ideally.

    The idea of a blogging format to touch on student progress is novel, but not absurd. Sometimes, having the space to just take down one's thoughts can really help us all get our ducks in a row. Worst case scenario, I at least get the enjoyment of hearing my fingers tippity tapping on the keyboard for a bit, which makes me feel real productive. And, I guess by definition, this sort of writing is a kind of technical communication. I've honestly thought a few times about starting a blog on my own time, because my opinions are very plentiful, and, to me, very interesting, so this is a nice kick in the rear to do it. As a writer, it helps a lot to have an outlet for putting words on the page that doesn't involve any external pressure of publishing-level quality. It's a lot like doodling in a sketchbook between big paintings. Did I mention I also draw? Maybe I can put some of my illustrations up here.

    Anyway, this class as a whole is full of pleasant surprises. Things have been very well-communicated and thoughtful to the point where I rarely have any doubt about what I need to be doing to move forward. There are a lot of real-world applications, especially in the textbook, that help me wrap my head around the way that otherwise inscrutable office jobs actually work. This is exactly the kind of thing that people talk about when they say, "oh, I don't know what it is he does. Some kind of business work." It's always been very nebulous and opaque to me, and this class seems to be doing well to wave that smoke away.

    For those of you who are still around, thanks! I've been a little rambly for these past few hundred words, but consider that my way of wordily stretching my legs. Like I said, it's freeing to write something that doesn't have to be at absolute max efficiency, which is how I've been approaching most of my fiction as of late. I hope that the first week of school has treated all of you guys well!