December 30, 2005

My first blog ever was exactly one year ago today, for Marqui's World.  I remember being nervous and excited, sitting in my living room at home, about to (in a very personal way) enter into the cacophony of the blogosphere. 

I had no idea what the year would hold, and have to say, looking back, that my experience in business blogging has wildly exceeded my expectations.   

I've come to the conclusion that a business' word is its brand.  And in this new world of communication options, it has never been more important to consider the power of words.

Upon reflection, and for inspiration, I leave my last post of 2005 with the words of Jeanette Winterson.  She wrote a book called Sexing the Cherry in 1989 that amazed me because of the following vignette, which I am delighted to quote here. 

(In fact, I loved it so much when I read it, I called her publicist to see if I could have it animated.  I worked with some animators from Will Vinton Studios at the time, and the answer was, unfortunately, no.)

Upon reflection, it lives more strongly in the imagination.  I hope you'll enjoy the ride - compliments of Jeanette:

"To escape the weight of the world, I leave my body where it is, in conversation or at dinner, and walk through a series of winding streets to a house standing back from the road.

The streets are badly lit and the distance from one side to the other no more than the span of my arms.  The stone crumbles, the cobbles are uneven.  The people who throng the streets shout out at each other, their voices rising from the mass of heads and floating upwards towards the church spires and the great copper bells that clang the end of the day.  Their words, rising up, form a thick cloud over the city, which every so often must be thoroughly cleansed of so much language. Men and women in balloons fly up from the main square and, armed with mops and scrubbing brushes, do battle with the canopy of words trapped under the sun.

"The words resist erasure.  The oldest and most stubborn form a thick crust of chattering rage.  Cleaners have been bitten by words still quarrelling, and in one famous lawsuit a woman whose mop had been eaten and whose hand was badly mauled by a viscious row sought to bring the original antagonists to court.  The men responsible made their defence on the grounds that the words no longer belonged to them. Years had passed.  Was it their fault if the city had failed to deal with its overheads?  The judge ruled against the plaintiff but ordered the city to buy her a new mop.  She was not satisfied, and was later found lining the chimneys of her accused with vitriol.

I once accompanied a cleaner in a balloon and was amazed to hear, as the sights of the city dropped away, a faint murmuring like bees.  The murmuring grew louder till it sounded like the clamoring of birds, then like the deafaning noise of schoolchildren let out for the holidays.  She pointed with her mop and I saw a vibrating mass of many colours appear before us.  We could no longer speak to each other and be heard. 

She aimed her mop at a particularly noisy bright red band of words who, from what I could make out, had escaped from a group of young men on their way home from a brothel.  I could see from the set of my companion's mouth that she found that particular job quite distasteful, but she perservered, and in a few moments all that remained was the fading pink of a few ghost swear-words....

.... Toward the end of the day we joined with the other balloons brushing away the last few stray and vagabond words.  The sky under the setting sun was the colour of veined marble, and a great peace surrounded us.  As we descended through the clean air we saw, passing us by from time to time, new flocks of words coming from the people in the streets who, not content with the weight of their lives, continually turned the heaviest of things into the lightest of properties...."

May peace surround you and yours in the New Year, and may we all turn the heaviest things into the lightest of properties as we all move through 2006.

Cheers.

Posted by at December 30, 2005

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