I decided to learn how to play “Word Up” by Cameo because I’m a wordsmith, and because it’s got a really nice groove to it. Plus, it’s not something somone would expect from a Florida cracker with an acoustic guitar. Still, I wasn’t exactly sure what to write about it, and then I remembered that I’d recently written a piece on words that started as prose and ended as poetry, and it pretty much sums up how I feel about “Word Up”.
WORDS
Words come as they need to. They don’t really need to be forced. They simply need to be ready for those who would receive them. Whether the user of the word be reader or writer, the word awaits those who are ready to engage with it.
As both writers and readers, we often seek out the words we need to help us make sense of the perceived reality we are experiencing. As seekers of truth, they serve as the stepping stones toward understanding. As those who are open to guidance, they reveal themselves to us when we most desperately and magically need them.
They can be used as tools of divisiveness, building on our notion of duality and opposites. They can be used to wage unnecessary wars, enabling the notions of disparity and difference. They can be used to attack, assault, and tear away at the very fabric of life.
Yet they can also be the threads that bind ideas together. They have the capacity to heal wounds and work miracles. They create treaties, contracts, and agreements, moving toward a world of greater understanding and collaborations.
For good or ill, words are the tools we use to cast spells, to entangle our shared reality in common concepts we can use to connect us through communication and clarification. They are how we engage one another with new ideas and enchant one another with new visions. They are the building blocks of the reality we experience and create.
These morsels of letters, infused with both sound and fury, reveal maps of demarcation across the shared planes of our existence. Through the use of words, we tell stories, share dreams, and help one another to write the world. Whether we share them visually or vocally, our words construct the fabric of the world we know.
With words we write the world we understand, we share the lens of our perceptions.
They give us the power that we need to make amends and make corrections.
We write the world through the words we use, by ink and through our voice,
and how we use the words we use is a very vital choice.
If we realize the power of the words we use and how they affect who we are,
and planning the world that we’d like to live in, we are bound to go very far.
If we decide to use them foolishly, either through trickery or outright folly,
eventually, we will find ourselves submerged and melancholy.
For both creation and destruction, words are mighty tools,
and those who don’t understand the power they wield of the very worst kinds of fools.
Words can spread truth as well as lies, and we had better learn the difference,
and if we give them the respect they deserve, they could provide our deliverance.
So wisely choose the words you use as you describe your reality,
for the words you dream up and share with the world will become your actuality.
