Twos-Day: A Loss
I’m supposed to say something.
I’m usually a pretty yappy fella. I’m on two podcasts, after all. And for all rights and purposes I am a professional writer. Language has always been the unending source of paint for the canvas that is my existence. So when I find myself at a lack for words…I notice.
I’ve restarted this article about ten times. Throwing it throw a prism of consideration wondering which facet exactly I’d try to uncover or discover or from which I’d need to recover. None satisfied me. Because I felt like there was nothing I could really say because…there was nothing I could say.
Chase, I am cutting to it.
I just finished Spec Ops: The Line. Well, that’s not entirely true. I finished it about a week ago. In fact, I finished it and am now pretty well mired in another game already. It was requested that I write about Spec Ops and all the while through I was very eager to. This game was rife with conversation potential, and, hell, someone wrote a whole goddamn book about it.
But as the final few unforgettable moments started trickling away until I was left with credits and my thoughts, I realized that this was no mere “Here’s this about this aspect” type of game. And if you treated it that way, you were doing a disservice to this…
I have no word for it. Maybe I’m lazy, but I doubt it.
Let’s examine for a minute what a lack of speech really means, shall we?
Speech, words, whatever is one of the most powerful ways humanity understands life. Be it through poetry, philosophy, song lyrics, even things like recipes and instruction manuals are still words that turn wonder to ways. Language is how we refine the sensory overload we get every day, every second and turn it into reason and logic.
Without language we are lost.
It’s also a basic, natural instinct of ours. Even a simple “Wow!” or, conversely, “Shit!” will happen sometimes whether we will them or not. We can help but be verbal. It’s in our nature. It was a key component of our evolution. It’s as reflexive as any other reaction. It’s unavoidable.
So when we are without, we are, essentially, defenseless. We are as we were as children, in a more primal state, unable to reason our way to relief. We have no choice but to be ourselves as purely as we can ever hope to be. Hopefully whatever is under there is still human.
So there I was, controller beside me, unable to find those desperately needed assortments of the alphabet to make myself me again. And I’m not much better now.
They say the best art inspires you to express yourself as that artist did for you. And there’s truth there. But to me, the truly best art is that which shatters you. That which forces you, whether you want it or not, to reevaluate every certainty you thought you had.
Art should not inspire you to make more art. Art should force you to take a journey. Because that’s what a true artist did to create their art, and it wasn’t easy for them. And now it’s your turn.
But first, we must have that moment where all our lessons fail us, where our knowledge is upended, where we are finally without.
Go play Spec Ops: The Line. See who you are afterwards.
I wish I could tell you, but I am at a loss for…
