Re: Introducing Paul Burgess and his radioactive imagination!

3/17/03 1:42:48 PM, And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
wrote:

>I am curious as to what extent Hermetic has remained
>unchanged, apart from simply being added to, since you
>began it at age 13.
For the first few years, there was some fluidity and
some revisions to the workings of Hermetic.

But by the time I was 16 or so, the basic outlines of
the language had pretty well set. Anything that was good
Hermetic when I was 16 is pretty much likely still to be
good Hermetic today, 30 years later.

I've added to the language over these past 30 years--
adding vocabulary, deepening and extending meanings and
connotations of words, tinkering with idioms, etc. But
the only outright revisions in these past three decades
have been a handful of words which I've changed. In the
very earliest days of Hermetic, I borrowed some words
straight from English in a rather naive way, and some of
these are among the handful of Hermetic words which I've
changed over the years. (Others, I've never managed to
change!)

The features of Hermetic have always tended quickly to
become "set in concrete"-- I've always had a hard time
changing anything in the language, once I've set it in
place. The best I can do is "engage in an argument" with
Hermetic, and more often than not, the language wins the
argument and I lose. It's as though Hermetic has a mind
of its own. I can exert pressure on the language, but
the language "presses" right back at me! If there's a
word I want to change, sometimes I have to "argue" with
Hermetic for years before it will "give me permission"
to make the change.

Which, in itself, is one of the characteristics of
Hermetic which has always fascinated me.


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     E-mail   paul@paulburgess.org
     Website  http://www.paulburgess.org
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