Language Complicates Things

I watched Chris Abani's TED Talk again the other day. He's been looping through my head ever since.

The talk has some beautiful insight into language and translation: "misreading is the chance for complication and opportunity."

I think mistyping might work just as well.

I got an email about a book yesterday. It was a recommendation, a quick explanation, and a mention of the fact that the author was a "heroine addict."

Lots of power packed into that tiny little "e." I didn't even know heroine addiction existed. If it didn't before, though, it does now.

Abani again:

We often think that language mirrors the world in which we live. And I find that that's not true. Language makes the world in which we live.

I think we could do a lot worse than a world of rampant heroine addiction.

And maybe we're already on that path. Day before yesterday, a friend of mine launched a website. I could be jumping to conclusions after only a preliminary browse of the site, but I think we just coined the term for the One Brave Chick target audience: heroine addicts.

I'm pretty sure the site will do a better job of attracting and retaining members of this untapped and growing market segment if it becomes a space on which heroine addicts can interact with one another and tell stories. But it'll get there. I like its style: a brand building its ideology before constraining itself with products or services. I'll be watching to see where it goes.