Flaubert, Majical Cloudz, and Normal Words

"He did not distinguish, this man of such great expertise, the differences of sentiment beneath the sameness of their expression. Because he had heard such-like phrases murmured to him from the lips of the licentious or the venal, he hardly believed in hers; you must, he thought, beware of turgid speeches masking commonplace passions; as though the soul's abundance does not sometimes spill over in the most decrepit metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of their needs, their ideas, their afflictions, and since human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we knock out tunes for dancing-bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars."

Reading Flaubert has been a delight. The above passage has stuck with me over the last week.

I've been so concerned these days with the distinction between generality and particularity. In Rodolphe we see a character whose experience of love and sexuality has been dulled by the sheer number of lovers he has had. Love all appears the same to him. In grand, ordinary language he sees nothing but the mundane. Elaborate language does nothing but mask the plainness of love.

The particularity of poetic language simply points to the boring generality that undoubtedly lies in our souls. There is, however, the possibility of the inverse: that normal, generic language can point to the deepest, most particular feelings. 

This is something that I recently encountered in the singer Majical Cloudz. His lyrics are awfully plain. 

Here with you
We're a pair me and you
In my soul it's true
I wanna know you
I would love to
When you go
I will worship you
I will remember you
Of course I would
I would love to

Yet listening to him sing, and seeing him perform live revealed the depth in those words. It is something that you can sense in his voice, something you can read in his body and feel in his eyes. 

There is something great about regarding ordinary words as indicative of something unique.

I greatly prefer to think of generality as an indicator of particularity. 

Nothing is as boring or ordinary as it seems.