Permanent Text

What strikes me the most about words is the emotion that they illicit from us. It is strange to think that a mixture of lines can have so strong an impact on us, or that they can have none at all. Words written in one language have tremendous meaning for one person but for a non-speaker they have no effect. The written word was developed to preserve our emotions and ideas, our spoken word preserved through time in a mixture of universally recognized symbols. This preservation of the spoken word allows us as a human race to build on our knowledge base and understanding of each other. It brings us closer together. What I am most interested in is the power behind the written word and how it plays on our emotions, there is something more permanent about the written word that carries an authority over a spoken one. When reading something we often retain it more easily than when it is spoken, our mind holds onto it much better. I suppose this is why the title of the reading is funny, becuase I find the written word to be the opposite of liquid. It has a permanancy to it. The written word stays in the same place where as spoken words drift in and out of conversations and are hard to control, much like liquid. Even though written text is only supposed to serve the purpose of recording what is said, the permanancy of the written word can change the meaning of the spoken one in ways no one anticipates. Seldom does one know the impact of their own written word.