Genius and cliché

We were talking about how closely cliché and genius are aligned. That when a cliché is brand new it's as good as Shakespeare, in other words, genius.

Then we threw some clichés around, to see how they stood up to the talking we'd done about them. Doing so, we could see the alignment, that whoever spoke or wrote the first cliché was indeed a genius, the second speaker less so, and all those after not geniuses at all.

The word whatever was our least favorite cliché, running only slightly ahead of, it is what it is. Bottom line, cut to the chase, oh my God, he's a man's man, law of the jungle--clichés all of them--were runners up.

The pressure on language in the modern era has always been to make it new and only connect. Clichés when properly used and handled with care provide that opportunity.

Just this morning the genius in me discovered that a favorite chair was coming apart right in front of my eyes. The old chair was disconnecting in its fierce struggle to avoid cliché.

History proves there are forces beyond our control, that fighting against them is useless and, while no man or woman is an island, it is, at this time, good policy to surrender to clichés and to language centered poetry.