Wednesday 13 July 2016

More Echoes. (Second verse, sort of like the first).

I like to listen for turns of phrase, vernacular utterances that hold place while expressing some kind of wisdom about the world. The first line of this piece was mentioned by a man I worked with in a woodshop in Dawson city (1994). He may have been referring to my inablilty to cut wood to consistent lengths, I can't remember, but as he said it, I jotted it down with a marker on a wood scrap (below) let it turn in my mind a couple of times...then once more to make a point.


It seems it occupied a place in mind for my friend Ian as well...here, years later the phrase echoes as title story in his recent collection of short stories. It really isn't the same, ever.


This poster (below) was in that woodshop as well. I recreated as a piece of art and it initiated a minor interest in symmetrical phrases; I keep finding and losing the name of this literary format. The structure of language has a meaning that is both connected to, and above and beyond the meaning of the words that are used. 


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