Strunk & White's Rule #17: Omit Needless Words

"Vigorous writing is concise.  A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.  This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."
-Strunk and White, The Elements of Style

The trouble is, how does one omit needless words when one has been unable to write?  I'm working on it, but finding the time has been difficult.  I forgot how exhausting the first week of school is, particularly in Fall Quarter.  The inevitable amount of loafing that occurs over the summer atrophies all of those mental endurance muscles built up during the academic year.  The compartments in which one sorts duties to work, family, and sleep weaken.  I've done myself the huge favor of adding an additional responsibility:  blogging.  What I really need to do is find balance.  A warning about this came this week:  Find balance, or your body will stop you.

I woke up at 1am this Thursday with the sensation that a grain of sand had wedged itself between my left eyeball and eyelid.  I took out my contacts immediately (I know, I know...you shouldn't sleep in your contacts, but my O.D. gave me these nifty "Night-Day" contacts and said they'd be fine) and tried to go back to sleep.  Instead, I spent an hour alternating between flushing my eye of whatever foreign body was trapped in there, and trying to convince myself that I was just imagining things and my eye was perfectly fine - just really dry from wearing my contacts for too long.  Eventually, I did fall asleep, but spent the next hour of sleep dreaming that my eye was somehow keeping me from getting something accomplished.

My daughter woke me up twice that night - at 3am and again at 5am - and each time I checked my eye in her bathroom mirror.  I must have been rubbing it in my sleep, because each time it was progressively pinker.  By the time my alarm went off at 6:30, my eye was a bright shade of scarlet.  Foolishly, I put my contact in (the grain-of-sand sensation was the same, with or without the contacts) and went to school.  Ten minutes after I logged onto my computer, the pain became nearly unbearable.  I ran to the bathroom to check my eye yet again.  This time, I noticed something off:  two cream-colored spots on my cornea right in front of my iris. 

So I called the doc.  He took a picture of my eye.  It looked something like this: 

Corneal ulcers, otherwise known as the reason you shouldn't sleep in your contact lenses.  And, just like an ulcer, corneal ulcers are exacerbated by stress.  There was no balance this week, thus I have two ulcers on my eye.  They are also a pain in the ass.  I have to put antibiotic drops in my eyes every two hours.  My eye hurts if I stare at a computer screen for too long.  It's also incredibly sensitive to light, and when I look too quickly in another direction, the entire left side of my face hurts. 

Lesson learned.  I can't wear my contacts for a week or so anyway.  Long story short, this is one of the many reasons why my writing hasn't been as normal as it should be.  It's all my fault - no one to blame for this temporary handicap but me. 

Take care of yourself, take care of your eyes, and find balance.  I'm sure there are plenty of words in this blog that should be omitted, but my eye is tired.  I'll edit later.

I love Andrew Bird...and you should, too.

First, you can't write about Andrew Bird when you're listening to the Boss.  So, allow me a moment to change my playlist...

That's better.

I love Andrew Bird, and I think you should, too.  If you don't already own any Andrew Bird, open a new tab on your search engine and navigate to blip.fm.  Search for any of the following songs:  A Nervous Tick Motion of the Head, Imitosis, Tenouousness, Anonanimal, Masterfade, Opposite Day, Armchairs, or Tables and Chairs.

My adoration for Andrew Bird can be expressed best by the words of my husband, who said the following when he described a play by the Steelers during the opening game for the NFL season:  "It's complex.  It's complex.  There's complexity there.  There's lots of layers."

Layer 1- Lyrics.

Andrew Bird can use the following words and phrases in any one of his songs:  proto-Sanskrit Minoans, Uralic syntaxes, cephalopods, radiolarians,  kewpie dolls, and/or onsies.  That's right:  Andrew Bird used Uralic syntaxes in a song.  What are Uralic syntaxes you ask?  According to my trusty iWork Dictionary and Thesaurus (yes, I had to look it up...not ashamed to have done so, either), Uralic means "of, relating to, or denoting a family of languages spoken from Scandinavia to western Siberia, comprising the Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic groups."

I ask myself, as I ask you:  What does it all mean?  Bird himself has admitted that he's still discovering the meaning of some of his songs, so the field for interpretation is wide open (Bird's Blog for the New York Times).  The fact that Bird also includes coprophagia (to eat poop) in the lyrics may cause the unconscious scratching of one's head.  Don't shy away!  Deny any urge you may have to run quickly in the other direction.  Bird challenges the rules of conventional song writing.  Ask yourself, "when was the last time I had to use a dictionary to understand a song?"  When you find yourself saying "never," thank Andrew Bird for giving you an opportunity to raise your IQ by a couple of points.

Layer 2 - Imagery
You may argue that imagery and lyrics have a lot to do with each other.  No disagreement here.  That doesn't mean they can exist on two layers for the listener.  Not only does Andrew Bird engage in clever wordsmithing, he does so with a craft and precision that makes it dangerous to drive or impossible to walk a straight line when I listen to his music.  From clown fish drifting through sea anemones in Anonanimal, to two people navigating their way through a relationship in Armchair, Andrew Bird tells a story with every song full of scents, sounds, and memories.  Even whimsy.

Layer 3 - Instrumentation

Violin.  Guitar.  Whistle (his lips, not the instrument).  Loop pedal.  Sometimes he even uses a glockenspiel. 

Check out this link to Pitchfork TV.  Bird performs his song Anonanimal in a church...alone...no back up (you may need to navigate to this...it's page 3 on the list of "other videos").  I realize that the use of a loop pedal is nothing revolutionary, but the orchestral delight of Bird mixing layer upon layer of violin riff, whistle, and guitar chord is a reminder that this form of performance art is more than just the words and the notes; it's the texture of the sound as well.

Layer 3 - Message and Meaning

Dark Matter is one of my favorite Andrew Bird songs, and here's why:  Dark Matter, Operation, Action Toys, and a question of where our souls find their home.  Divergent?  Not really.  Bird weaves the concepts together in a delicate tapestry that aches with nostalgia and the universal theme of faith.  Do you wonder where the soul resides?  Is it in your head or between your sides, and who will be the one who will decide its true location?

Andrew Bird has read Silent Spring.  Maybe he's just read the intro.  I don't know...I don't have the man on speed dial to ask him.  But it's obvious from Spare-Ohs that he's thought a lot about the use of pesticides and other industrial chemicals in today's commercial culture.  Maybe he's just seen The Story of Stuff.  Who cares.  What's important is that he cares about message.  He asks big questions in his songs; he critiques; he points fingers.  Move over, Ani Difranco (actually, one of Bird's first solo albums was released by Ani's label, Righteous Babe Records).

Layer 4 -Andrew Bird is a genuine NERD.
And I love him for it.  The man is gawky, skinny, angular, whimsical, awkward, and adorable.  He's obsessive about his music...many of his songs are reworkings of previous attempts - I for Imitosis, for example. He worked GPS and binary language into one of his songs, for crying out loud! Can you guess what Scythian Empire is about?  Awesome song.  Haliburton makes an appearance.

I've droned on long enough.  Listen to some of his music.  Learn for yourself the genius of the crush my husband tolerates.  I leave you with the lyrics to Fiery Crash.  Take what lesson you will from the words...especially given today's date:

Fiery Crash, from Armchair Apocrypha
Turnstiles on mezzanine
Jet ways and Dramamine fiends and x-ray machines
You were hurling through space,
G-forces twisting your face
Breeding superstition
A fatal premonition
You know you got to envision the fiery crash.

Oh close your eyes and you wake up
Face stuck to a vinyl settee
Oh the line was starting to break up
Just as you were starting to say
Something apropos I don't know

Beige tiles and magazines
Lou Dobbs and the CNN team on every monitor screen
You were caught in the crossfire
Where every human face has you reaching for your mace
So it's kind of an imposition
fatal premonition

To save our lives you've got to envision
and save all our lives you've got to envision
the fiery crash

It's just a formality
Why must I explain?
Just a nod to mortality
Before you get on a plane.

Oh close your eyes and you wake up
face stuck to a vinyl settee
Oh the line was starting to break up
What was that you were going to say?

Going public...the door really is open

In On Writing by Stephen King, King quotes one of is first editors, John Gould:
"...write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.  Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.  Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway - it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.  Or criticize it."

So, here it goes.  There isn't much here, yet.  I don't know if I'll be able to post with any regularity.  Be kind, and don't keep the door shut for too long on what you write.