Ellipsis
A vocab word of the week that is a punctuation mark which is somehow culturally aligned with Gen X...
Also, literati. …
I use the ellipsis quite frequently in my texts and other social media type writings. I do it too much, according to some—back several years ago when I was dating, whenever a new human entered my world, we’d perforce begin getting to know each other via some kind of message app, chatting. They’d react (often curious or taken aback) to my copious ellipsis use, and, though they wouldn’t always call me out on it, I noticed that they would begin mimicking my proliferation of them. And o yes, I did indeed waste my precious tweet character count with those three little dots, quite often, without hesitation…
I don’t know why I happen to be so enamored with using the ellipsis. Something about the tone of voice it elicits in your head when you read it, or maybe because, though it can be used as an end punctuation, it indicates that the thought continues…
It’s an invitation, in a way. A gesture in typeface for you to add your two cents, or to eagerly await more thoughts of mine to come.
In most current text message apps, when you see a person is online and present, and engaged in your conversation, the ellipsis will ripplingly appear (often with a matching sound effect), indicating your conversation partner is typing. The ellipsis in this case is literally signaling a continuation of the conversation, by symbolizing the other person’s composing of a reply. Like many of the poetical names for technological things (like the term “breadcrumb,” for example), that symbolic animation especially tickles me. Watching it ripple, it fills one with suspense. What will they say next? Or did they just leave their cursor in the text box without paying attention, gahh I hate it when they do that…
I’ve also noticed that in many recent written renditions of dialogue, especially online like on tumblr or Twitter (sorry, on X. Sigh…) and very often in manga and anime, the ellipsis is used to indicate a person’s nonverbal reaction. No Pinter-esque
(pause)
or
(silence)
for these online storytellers: the ellipsis is a much more vivid illustration of the nonverbal continuation of a conversation.
The ellipsis is a selfie of sorts representing me today because I have been grading all day yesterday, and most of the week have been pouring all my creative (and otherwise) energy into the organization, performance, and many social obligations of Blue Dime Cabaret, including our next show coming up tonight, AND that after a full week of new morning workouts followed by fresh composition. Plus a 24-hour stomach bug. It’s a tired mindbody here, people… But it’s the laborious grading of my grad students’ writing work that saps my brain power the most. And so.
My mind, therefore, is beyond foggy today: it’s not exactly a blank, but when I sat down at the crowded ‘local’ and considered what to write about, what vocab word I should pick out, my brain just went: …
…
Ever since my friendship with Christina, I have engaged in a social/work practice I call ‘literati’. This consists of going to a coffee shop (these days, a pub will do) and taking at least one full hour to work on whatever writing or otherwise creative project we have on the front burner. My partner and I do this regularly, too—we especially did it frequently together before I moved in with him permanently—our us-time Saturdays would always consist of literati time at St. Mark’s coffee shop, amid the hipsters, perched on tall and grand steel-slatted thrones pulled up to a wobbly table that we had to wad napkins under to keep our coffees steady. But. The one rule for literati time is that there’s no work allowed (even if it’s creative-type work). Literati time is for writing, or otherwise artistic personal projects only.*
*In recent years of this literati practice, my partner and I have made a new version. It’s called ‘workerati’ and it happens when we want to go out and have a nice little co-working sesh but we actually have to work on work-work and not personal projects. For deadline, paycheck, or other such reasons. And these days, since I’ve birthed my Substack, all this personal writing I’m doing for here does smack a bit more of a work-style writing gig than a purely personal project, just because of all the volume and deadlines happening at full constant tilt. Though, don’t worry, I do feel fulfilled creatively just the way I would were I not imposing same onto myself. Maybe this Substack thing is a happy medium, or best of both worlds for this type of work. Now if only I could get paid a little more for it…
…I do try and schedule projects for myself to work on when I’m not out doing literati, too, though that doesn’t always work as well for some reason. Alone at home just isn’t the same, is it. And how many of us have discovered this problem during lockdown time: everything is from home, even the stuff that’s impossible to do from home, like literati work. Last week, for example, I had two different WIPs that are important as well as imminent, that needed not only finishing but actually sending out. Like, to another person. A person that might want to publish the thing in question. So like, important. I even wrote the two projects down in my calendar, color-coded them purple for writing work, w/ little checkboxes for when I accomplished them. Little did I know, when I planned this so diligently, how much my energy level and capacity for creative output would be so sapped still by the day-to-day biz of the overworked and underpaid academic. Maybe I should go over to the pub...
SIDE NOTE: This essay as I read it over again actually makes me caution you to NOT get me started on my frankly alarming use of em-dashes. Or maybe that’s another essay? If my brain stays this foggy, I’ll have to come back to it—maybe I’ve just saved myself a brainstorming session. Anyway.
To be continued…