swishism

It all started when I was sat in an easy chair in January of ‘04, contemplating ‘03 and trying to capture in words something that could encompass all the potential I felt the new year had in store (as you do). The year gone by had been my first, cutting my teeth, on London’s open mic poetry circuit.  I figured it was just my luck when all that came to mind was not a word, but a sound. That sound was ’swish’, as in the Onomatopoeia (a word whose sounds suggests its sense). I suppose I had always had a soft spot for its charm, having long admired the game of basketball–there was always something about the “all-net” totality of a shot that fit perfectly and almost soundlessly through the rim, but for that sound, swish.  The same is true of swordsmanship, an art blurred by speed of hand and mind, and exacted by precision of the razor sharp, whirling audibly through air.

So in those days, nets and blades were about the size of my frame of reference for these 5 letters (no wonder so much of it escapes me). And then, on that first day of 2004, as I was sat in that easy chair, something extraordinary happened: suddenly and without warning, combinations of words began to come to mind for this sound, and the first swishisms were born.  I say born, what I really should say is they were discovered, it was as if they had been not far from me my whole life, and were now falling into place,  into some strange possibility-unlocking sequence. Among the first was “so,what.if.silence.hums?” I stopped short of retorting, “Then why can’t I hear it?”, chuckling and intrigued though, I began to listen and in doing that stumbled upon an answer. (If silence does hum, for the sake of our own peace, we should listen!) And so began the pursuit of swishes (plural), or the perfect swishism. They would sometimes just manifest in complete phrases, other times just a fragment of an idea, poking out and toying with my imagination, cloaking itself in mystique like a wise old sensai insisting that when I was ready all would become clear, you can’t stop an idea whose time has come.