Tired words tire readers

Sentimentality and its close ally, nostalgia, are weaknesses of expression. The route to good working prose is via detachment. This doesn’t mean eschewing emotion, it means treating it sparingly. The analogy is tomato ketchup; over-use can discourage you from even touching a blood-boltered* hamburger, never mind eating it.

We may be moved by what we see or hear. The mistake is to concentrate on what’s churning inside us rather than the thing itself; in effect saying we are more important than that which moves us. Betraying that thing and putting ourselves at risk. For the expressions of emotion are full of over-worn words and concepts which have lost their ability to make a point.

Someone, perhaps talking about the Australian fires, said, “It’s impossible to describe.” Quite true. Then, sadly, went on to try, with predictable results.

I worry about “sentimental” (Appealing to, or resulting from, feeling rather than reason; having an excess of superficial sentiment.) Thomas Allen, singing Silent Witness, caused my throat to constrict. I got over this by singing SW myself.  Certainly, that physical reaction occurred but it was transient. The song endures but in a modified form, appealing to others in different ways.

Scenery is regularly corrupted by those viewing it. And these are people paid to communicate, often academics giving “tone” to a TV programme. One giveaway is the fallback “incredible” – primary definition: too extraordinary and improbable to be believed. It has milder secondary meanings but they merely confuse matters. Why not pause and look again. If you distrust your eyes and the readily available vocabulary dig up the 1972 TV series on art, Ways of Seeing, by John Berger (see  pic). It hasn’t dated.

I’m shouting down a well. I’m told it’s therapeutic.

*WS quote