Shouts From Down Under

A blind man would be glad to see it.

Personal Belief warning.

There is a man in the Northwest of Tasmania who drives a black vehicle with a thin stick on white lettered sign across the back windscreen / door area.

It says, You are following a BLIND man. He sells and installs window blinds.

A ho hum joke I suppose. But I remembered it today, and my mind translated this into author-speak.

We are writing for an imaginary person, but even if they are real, they are also blind, deaf and cannot feel anything.

We are not creating computer games, with graphics, sound and tactile sensation, even if technology still limits the cyber experience to a mouse and WS / DA keys for Forwards and Backwards and Left / Right traverse.

No. We are attempting to create that world in readers minds of course.

This may sound depressing and a task beyond us. I mean, it's like explaining what Red or Blue look like to a blind man. And what colour is Salt? How yellow is hot?

I suppose everyone remembers or has heard of Helen Keller. I think Sugar Rose Dupre mentioned her one day in a comment on here?

I remember reading about her, and her teacher. The incredible dawning when the locked up, introverted, angry, frightened and uncommunicative girl suddenly stopped her tantrums and rage, when she felt her teacher gently hold her hand under the tap water, and then draw the letters on her hand. That's what I remember, something like that, from the story / facts.

Us writers aren't much different from that. But it's not all bad news or such an impossible thing.

Because if we learn to do this well, even very well, then there seems no limit to the worlds we can create, and what goes on in those worlds, for people to loose themselves in, and enjoy the escapism.

That's what it's about isn't it really. At the end of the day, people want to escape. (Ok, maybe not everyone reads for that reason, but anyone whose ever had to face up to stuff that is consistently trying in their lives, will also have had times where they tried to escape it one way or another.

I have a confession about stories and books. And even saying it makes me into a hypocrite, really.

I feel that books, even the best intentioned non fiction book, but obviously more so fiction, are just a lie. (TV shows are even worse, the documentary and nature shows no exception).

Yes, I believe that the books we all write are a lie. We just learn to tell it the most convincing way, and win over the reader, so that they give permission to be lied to even more.

And the reason I say that the rest, even nature books, even the most factual non fiction book you could get, are lies, or at best are not 100% reality,, is that the written word is just a view of the world through that writer.

TV shows, no matter how well researched, no matter how they are filmed perfectly, every detail accurate and all the rest of it, they are still not reality. They are just what is seen through the limitations of the lens.

Books are just what is experienced through the written word.

You can see it coming, can't you, what I'm going to state next. But I concede, this is just beliefs. There is only one book I believe has been made available from many writers of letters, and from records, words from many different witnesses, through different eras many centuries and countries apart, that isn't a lie, and isn't just one view of reality.

Taken as a whole single communication to us, from the creator of this world and all that is in it, of course, I'm referring to the Bible. That's just my personal belief, and I don't expect people to agree with it, but I don't feel I should back away from having my view and stating it in this entry, in this Blog.

There are a whole raft of debates and arguments against this book. I don't want to get involved in that. Life is just too short to argue on it.
All I will say about it is, that I enjoy reading that book very much, but don't read it anywhere near as much as I should. Seriously.

Because if we put the shoe on the other foot, OK? Put ourselves in the position of the blind man. We have been sent a message from the author of a book. But it's all in reverse. We are blind. Not only are we blind but we don't know how to read, or digest what we read.
We don't have the eyesight to read this book, or the understanding, if we could see it to know what on earth it's about.

Is it any wonder then that nobody believes it? Remember this next time you write a story. How to explain colour to a blind person, or that there is something that is black, on a white background, it's tiny shapes that put together in different ways form words.

So, getting back to the Bible and the author of it, you can easily work out that an almighty creator of such a beautiful complex world that we live in would know from day zero that blind people, with no understanding, wouldn't be able to read his Bible, or get the message or gist of what he was trying to say. And the message was very simple so that a babe could understand, in contrast to people who were older, religious, and as it says, "were wise and prudent."

What do we do if we know someone cannot see print, has no understanding of reading and not only that, perhaps doesn't even have hands.
To make the situation even more difficult, what if the person was a small child? How will we write a story / book for such an inexperienced mind?

How to write a story, or tell it, so that it would be a mystery to some (referred to as proud stiff necked people), yet very clear to others, (babes, or humble obedient children)?

Maybe that's stuff for another day.

Sparky