He'll only bring you souvenirs/It's only gonna end in tears/And he is only the imposter

Sang the glorious Elvis Costello on his classic album 'Get Happy' (listen to it, please, for your own sake).


And so, in the same sort of imposter-based vein, this post is about those people who fool you with words. They can spin you a web of 'golden lies', or even just one little white one, but at the end of the day, the word can be the ultimate in deception.

The things with speech, and more than ever these days, writing, is that we can often only take it on face value. We can almost never know whether it is meant or not; in some ways the meaning behind that word (though undoubtedly loaded with semantics, pragmatics and also body language and tone) is all we are given as insight into the speaker's mind. Am I making sense?

Consider for a moment that you are reading this. Your eyes register the shapes of the letters, process them as words and decode the meanings behind them. Enough work done already? No. Not half as much as I'd like. All of the above writing is fuelled by what happened to me today, what I talked about and the music I listened to. In a way, it's the result of a lifetime of experiences; for example, my dad has always liked Elvis Costello, but it wasn't until he purchased and played 'Get Happy' that I really got why he appealed. So there's the story behind that one. Do it for every sentence and you have enough life-story for a trilogy of teen dramas.

Do I mean it? You can't be sure. I could be fabricating a whole (admittedly weak) narrative for you to enjoy (or at least register), but where would either of us derive pleasure from in that situation? I guess it doesn't really matter if it's real or not, in the long run, because the truth is that it exists, in a sort of real enough way.

To cut to the chase, however, to cut right through the fatty outer and get to the artery and the high pressure blood flow, I arrive at the lifetime of "whirling words" (I'm reading Hamlet at college) which people have used to deceive me, and themselves.

We all know those people who delude themselves by talking themselves into or out of something. People who refer to us as best friends or great lovers, but who really never scratched the surface. All I can hope is that I never, or at least rarely, use words to cloak myself in such denial, and that people never use them to create a barrier between me and them.
I love you
I hate you
Let's be friends
It's not you, it's me
I never saw you like that
I loved her once, but not now
Words. Words, words and words. Meanings?
I never loved you at all.

Speak double dutch, to a real double duchess. My favourite lyric.
Sq.