{"id":897,"date":"2013-12-15T09:07:35","date_gmt":"2013-12-14T20:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=897"},"modified":"2014-03-11T20:25:01","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T07:25:01","slug":"use-words-i-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=897","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Use words I know.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kurtvonnegut\"<\/a>Many, many years ago, I managed to convince the powers that be at my secondary school that, rather than studying French or Latin in my fifth form year, I should be allowed to study art.\u00a0 As I recall, this encompassed drawing, painting, art history, and art criticism.<\/p>\n

Tuesday and Thursday mornings I studied English \u2013 where we were encouraged to write lucidly, succinctly, and with a sense of style.\u00a0 Wednesday and Thursday afternoons I studied art \u2013 where the prevailing language was both gushily convoluted and mystifyingly opaque.<\/p>\n

I quickly came to grips with the essence of clear and concise English.\u00a0 But I could never see the point of much of the language of art comment and criticism.<\/p>\n

Many years down the road, I still find my English lessons useful.\u00a0 I still try to say what I have to say with clarity, simplicity, and an element of style.\u00a0 And yet \u2013 and perhaps I am reading in all the wrong places \u2013 the language of art seems to have become even more obscure, even more opaque.<\/p>\n

Recently, I went to an exhibition of what might loosely be described as pottery.\u00a0 The pieces on display were more than competent.\u00a0 They showed a good deal creativity, and a real dollop of craftsmanship.\u00a0 Several made me smile.\u00a0 One even made me laugh.\u00a0 (Are you allowed to laugh in an art gallery?\u00a0 Now that I come to think about it, the woman behind the desk did look at me in a rather strange way.)<\/p>\n

The day after my gallery visit, I was half listening to one of my favourite radio stations, a mainly-talk station that focusses on news, current affairs, science, and culture.\u00a0 And, in the \u2018arts spot\u2019, a woman was reviewing the exhibition that I had just been to see.\u00a0 Or at least I think she was.<\/p>\n

The gallery\u2019s name was the same.\u00a0 The artist\u2019s name was the same.\u00a0 But the reviewer\u2019s commentary sounded as if she was reading randomly-chosen passages from James Joyce\u2019s Finnegans Wake mashed up with randomly-chosen entries from the Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases.\u00a0 And she was doing it in a tone of voice that suggested that she was wondering why she was wasting her time casting her beautiful polysyllabic pearls before such unworthy swine.<\/p>\n

Every trade, every profession, has its jargon.\u00a0 But if you are trying to communicate with a general reader (or listener), it\u2019s usually best to put aside as much of the jargon as possible.<\/p>\n

As the late Kurt Vonnegut advised students of his \u2018Form of Fiction\u2019 course at the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop: \u2018Do not bubble. \u00a0Do not spin your wheels. \u00a0Use words I know.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many, many years ago, I managed to convince the powers that be at my secondary school that, rather than studying French or Latin in my fifth form year, I should be allowed to study art.\u00a0 As I recall, this encompassed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":898,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions\/898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}