language lust pt 2

2 points make the prose of slam crucial to my contemporary language lust, (2) diction and (1) whatever rhetorical terms mean leaving words out or having clumsy grammar, i should say i never really read the lyrics, maybe i should, just the song titles mostly, and perhaps the compactness of a title, and sequence of titles, it lends a spare compactness that the lyrics do not because even in the shaky command of English the lyrics still frequently use articles and are not as charming, there is something so strong about a text fragment just being a string of nouns, shane Christmass talking to Bielecki saying he went back through a manuscript deleting adjectives (i think)... something akin to that sort of frustrating read, something about that stripping although unintentionally in the esl of the greatest slam lyricists, is a way of taking away the communicative intent of language and placing it in a pure visual concentrate shot straight into the part of your brain that doesn't care what things mean, 

My dear poetry teacher in grad school (oh to be the only literature professor in a freestanding architecture school) aino paasonen gently urged us to use specificity as thickening agent, i recall only an example, very simple, instead of "tree" say "Jacaranda"... of course my excessive lust for text potential turns that into a fascination with jargon, carcass was derided (by morons) for lyrics that were essentially copied out of medical textbooks, were they trying to make sense? did they know what they were saying? Doubtful doubtful, could you tell what they were saying lol of course not... what mattered was the juxtaposition of this insane indecipherable text with the music, gesamskunstwerk of atomization, each freestanding piece is resonating, so with the carcass stage set, we have all sorts of wild improvising on that model, my (not so secret) favorite of which is Drain of Impurity (see part 1 https://incastellated.blogspot.com/2022/11/language-lust-pt-1.html?m=1), the science fiction element added to the grotesque takes the diction way beyond the human, and batu's esl (he's Turkish) twists it just that sweet bit further by gloriously smashing subject/verb agreement & improvising on parts of speech, each song title is almost like a simple noun (made of 6 or 7 words) like a chunk, irreducible, meant to be gazed upon like a metaphor for language itself, like a stone of words, crushing your skull

he is in his own hell

I am not a trained writer.  I've never read a craft book. I've read theories on the potential of literature (not of writing), perhaps to my lifelong detriment.

One of the oulipo cats, Benabou? Queneau? Actually the mathematician guy... said something along the lines of,  in advocating for constrained writing, working within an established set of rules is better than being subject to a received set of rules you're unaware of, and as a writer to a certain extent i understand this, establishing a framework for the manner in which language will be performed, almost like the key of a musical piece, less like a sonata (or whatever a constrained musical form is, i have no clue), not prescriptive as much as chromatic, yes that seems crucial as long as it is in service of the project and not some unseen arbitrary ideal, perhaps the language should be performed like noise, the project is one of grating monotonous high intensity, perhaps it should be performed like a Richter squeegee painting, what are the language analogs to these, how can one be allusive without namechecking, how do you employ or misuse grammar in a rhetorical manner to foster that analog, what is the appropriate diction for that goal, so frequently language is seen as in service of something else, the something the writer is trying to tell (which makes show don't tell all the more hilarious to me) and the language is formed toward that goal under the mutated aegis of some hemingway handmedown notions of craft, sure there is a throttle in there, rachet up the tension, spareness, obliqueness, but never too much, although craft is presented (in the craft racket) as being a sort of constraint (since when is subjective standards of beauty a practical constraint), it it's in fact more the set of rules that you truly have no awareness of. If craft was solved how would the charlatans keep writing new craft how to books. No. It is far more valuable for a thoughtful writer to show through their specific use of language, because writing it's some thing you look at, to develop congruence of the langauage form with the specific piece, and reject some arbitrary standard for success. 

Getting people to read it... now that's a different problem.