In this discourse I wish to bring the reader’s attention to the effects of repetition on sense, specifically with regards to language. I pontificate, I jest, and I am quite curious as to whether I actually have a point; but let me try.

Our word of the day is: no. What do we know about ‘no’? It’s that little syllable of defiance, of renouncement, of fear. It can mute a trumpet. It can make a man float. It can ruin someone. But you already knew this; you’ve used this word before. Now, I’m not talking about the word per se, but how it changes with various deliveries; or, more specifically, how (/whether) the number of its repeats can alter its meaning, and, furthermore, whether there is tangible meaning contained within the specific number of repeats. To me, there are undeniable, almost exponential, differences that present themselves when the number is altered. Other factors play a vital and indispensable role too – the big, rearing heads of punctuation and context among them – but let us for one moment entertain the possibility that we can count meaning with our fingers.

We start, appropriately, at one:

No.

I ask you to squeeze the above like a birthday. What seeps out? Does it feel reluctant, or despondent? Does it exhale? Immediate? Abrupt?
Does it smell like Rosa Parks?
Is it the start of an argument? I admit that this is perhaps our most speculative example; that is, it could easily mean a plethora of things. I even think of that split second that must exist just before a murder occurs in which the whole world gasps and something is realised in the passing of a shadow by the window. But that’s a speculative shadow, and might just be a tennis racket atop a pile of clothes. And now in my head there’s a sign that says: no loitering. So we hop to our second destination.

No, no.

You’ve changed! No, no, not you, dear reader, but our little word here: doesn’t it feel different somehow? Isn’t it a Frenchman back on the wagon? (I fear I may have misappropriated my licence and slipped into stereotype. No, no, away, doubts.)  I’m confident you’ll agree that there is a moment that exists in the argument of two thoroughly self-convinced people in which one, having allowed the other to pipe the exhaust of his error into the ether, will arch somewhat, propped up staidly by his assurance, and, perhaps with a wag or two of a finger, utter the above. The world spins, but (no, no), it was not my fault.

(This is a thought that has to go here because otherwise it will be forgotten: earlier, when I was thinking about the subject of literary theory– well, haven’t we simply been making a mountain out of a lot of No?) Next!

No, no, no.

I’d like to take this opportunity to ask my lady to calm down. (To think, I almost wrote that women talk in threes!) Listen, don’t worry, I can’t be a misogynist because my mother was a woman– but isn’t the above a photograph of the inverse of that moment in The Great Gatsby when our author talks of the genteel ladies’ dresses as being like balloons, which at any minute might lift them off the sofa and send them twirling? Don’t they just come crashing down again like the Challenger spacecraft on that third no? I suppose that would technically be called a negative, actually.

No, no, no, no.

Well, this human’s in a hurry, aren’t they? Somewhere a mother is snatching biscuit mix out of her little boy’s hands. A friend of mine once said ‘don’t beat an egg till you’ve cracked it’, and isn’t this the sound of patience and hurry colliding headfirst? Life is a game of chicken with an army of eggs. (Don’t weigh that idea too much).

No, no, no, no, no.

I took an oath of allegiance to 4/4 earlier than the day I was born. I’m talking time signatures now, people. Number five is the new number one, just like black is the new black, and roses are the new ‘is a rose’. Tribesmen fall on the one like a tiger out of a tree– no, no, no, no, NO.  You must remember, on the day after you died, how you yourself crash-landed on a gargantuan drum, and the one, the I, went rippling once again?

I rest my case your honour; I am tired of saying no.

A romp.  Much enjoyed.  No?

Thanks, Lynn! Did not expect anyone to get to the end ;)

Hope novel business is marching forth,

james

The Irene novel is with an agent -- by October I hope to hear whether or not she wants to take me and my novel on.  I'm 22,000 words into a new novel project.  Yes, novel business is marching forth.  Yes.

and reading through to the end was never a question for me.  I like how your mind works, my friend.

ld

James, the read is fun, but I found myself, sometimes, too far from shore. I wanted more sense to pool in places. In the part of 4 no's, did you mean to mix the plural with the singular; this human's? What if you nixed the lone sentence; "we start..."? I think the interruption isn't necessary. You know, if you added a bunch of footnotes, it might seem more discursive? (David Foster Wallace)

larry