Our Culture Is An Edifice

Truman Capote Famously Claimed To Have Nearly Absolute Recall Of Dialogue And Used His Prodigious Memory As An Excuse Never To Take Notes Or Use A Tape Recorder, But I Suspect His Memory Claims Were Just A Useful Cover To Invent Dialogue Whole Cloth.

How Much Are We Willing To Lose From Our Already Short Lives By Losing Ourselves In Our Blackberries, Our Iphones, By Not Paying Attention To The Human Being Across From Us Who Is Talking With Us, By Being So Lazy That We're Not Willing To Process Deeply?

When We First Hear [a] Word, We Start Putting These Associational Hooks Into It That Make It Easier To Fish It Back Out At Some Later Date.

Since At Least The Middle Ages, Philosophers And Philologists Have Dreamed Of Curing Natural Languages Of Their Flaws By Constructing Entirely New Idioms According To Orderly, Logical Principles.

Once Upon A Time, This Idea Of Having A Trained, Disciplined, Cultivated Memory Was Not Nearly So Alien As It Would Seem To Us To Be Today.