No Fences!

I've been thinking about how we aren't born being taught how to paint or sculpt or play the tuba but from the gate (the baby gate!) we are taught to use the awesome artistic tool of language. We use words every day and with some success, right? We share ideas, come to some agreements, make it home again. So when does our workaday use of this fantastic tool slip into the artistic? When do we start using those everyday words to make magic instead of a grocery list and what made us think we could do such a thing?

As I'm reading more about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's too-short life in The Dream of the Audience, a collection of essays about her work, I'm thinking hard about the impact of language on our perception of ourselves and our supposed limitations. This idea is at the forefront of much of Cha's work, as you can see from this picture of Cha's square on the Berkeley Poetry Walk (right around the corner!). Cha is one of the first artists whose use of language let me know that I could, in fact, do absolutely anything I wanted with it. She lifted the fences I'd unknowingly put up and, basically, cracked open my mind to its own possibilities.

I'd love to know, whose work has done this for you! What writer gives you a passport to your own writer-ly freedom? It doesn't have to be a writer, either—what about a musician whose use of words catches your ear? Maybe Tupac sets you free! Maybe it's your uncle's slang that gets you going! Who uses words in a way that cracks open your brain and makes you want to start writing some down?