The Letter Killeth, but YouTube Gives Life

This post was meant to be about how the New Testament is generically fanfiction, but I got stuck almost immediately doing a Google search on whether anybody had made that claim before. Lo, and behold! It has already been discussed on Reddit, albeit without the cool references I was planning to give.

And then I lost my mojo. And wanted to start reading my social media instead.

I think I understand what is happening.

This isn’t writer’s block per se. Not in the sense that I suffered it ten or so years ago, when after a year on leave I overworked myself into a depression.

Then I was anxious about writing because I wasn’t sure what my big argument was going to be. (I figured it out—see my book!)

Now I know what my argument is going to be—my big argument, the one I am doing the background reading for in my teaching—but writing—even writing a blogpost as a warm-up—just seems so...slow.

Painfully slow.

Tortuously slow.

Excruciatingly slow.

I'm sure there is a better adverb to use...

I want to be out there on the internet, talking with people, not sitting here at my laptop writing...backing up...rethinking...adding a link...searching for the right word...wondering if anybody has thought these thoughts before...looking for a reference...rereading what I have written thus far to see if it makes any sense...

If only the words would flow as easily as they do when I am on camera, using my voice.

I cannot believe I just wrote that.

I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos these past three years. I started with Milo. Then branched out for a season into Jordan Peterson. Then last spring I found Vox Day’s criticisms of Jordan Peterson. (Full disclosure: I agree with Milo and Vox about Jordan.) I have even watched a few of Owen Benjamin’s livestreams of late.

And I have practiced being on camera myself.

It is a heady experience, being able to turn thoughts into gestures and facial expressions, not having to rely solely on disembodied words to make a more permanent point.

But who would have guessed that I would come to prefer it—me, who used to hate almost every photograph taken of her?

Writing now feels so...limited.

I want to be there in body and voice, not just in word!

It is an illusion, I know—I have heard Vox talk about this, how it is easier to deceive on camera than it is in print—but I have tasted the drug of immediacy, and I want more.

On camera, you can say anything, and the camera catches the whole—your smile, your grimace, your laugh, your gesture, the tilt of your head.

You don’t have to go back and look up “headtilt” to check whether it is a word, only to find that “head tilt” is a medical condition in rabbits.

You don’t have to footnote your every claim. You can use your voice to emphasize your certainty or your hands to suggest that you would like to learn more.

You can edit in real time, look away while you think, come back and reiterate what you meant more clearly now that you have found the right words.

You can use your eyes to invite your audience to agree with you and your voice to win them to your side.

You can, in other words, use all the tools of rhetoric as they were meant to be used—voice, words, gestures, intonations, emotions—conjuring your audience to win their goodwill by way of your physical self.

In writing, all you have is your words. And they must be exactly right. No emotions. No gestures. No intonation. No smiles. No voice.

No wonder writing is so hard.

It is a kind of death.

A stifling of the breath.

A binding of the hands.

A stilling of the body.

A step into the void where there is only the word.

No wonder God wanted to become incarnate and speak to us in the flesh. How else could He make us understand who He was?

Images: Me on Three Kraters Symposium Episode 69: 3KS Debates Vox Day’s Book Attacking Jordan Peterson