Boswell: Words are my passion

Depending on what your passion is in life, I have observed that everyone has different elements that speak to them more than others.

link Alisa Boswell

For those in the music realm, whether singers, musicians or directors, it is usually the sound of the music that speaks to them.

In the art realm, it is brush strokes and the message of the overall painting that usually speaks to people.

I have never been incredibly talented in any one area but have always dabbled in a little bit of everything. I play a little sports and, last summer, I began painting with acrylics. I attend almost every Eastern New Mexico University art show, music concert and theater performance, because I enjoy the venues.

Although I enjoy and dabble in a little bit of everything, there has always only been one thing I am truly passionate about and which speaks to me more than anything else. And that’s words.

In fact, I have had people comment on the fact that I always somehow integrate words into my paintings.

This particular quote hits close to home for me: “She had always wanted words; she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”

That’s from Michael Ondaatje, who wrote “The English Patient.”

You might think, Alisa, words speak to everyone. After all, they are words. This is true, but I will confess I am often times one to get on the “words are the most powerful tool you will ever use” soap box.

More than anything in this world, people take for granted words and the impact they have on others.

Rudyard Kipling said, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

Over the course of history, words have inspired; they have started wars; they have built people up and torn people down.

It’s such a simplistic, every-day part of our lives that most of the time we don’t really think about the true wonder and power of words.

I think about it every day. I have been a passionate reader and writer since I was a small child, but I was also bullied as a child, so the overwhelming impact words can have, whether positive or negative, struck me at a very young age. Maybe that’s why I wanted to be a writer. And now writing for the public, I take the power of words more seriously than ever.

I curse when I get mad, just like everyone else, and I stumble over my words and often times do not convey things as gracefully as I should or could. But I am also aware of the impacts my words and others’ words have.

In this modern-day world of technology, it is easy for words to be misunderstood, making it more important than ever to take great responsibility in using them, something I wish more people in my field would recognize.

Because after all, “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced,” according to Aldous Huxley in “Brave New World.”

Alisa Boswell likes words and Lisa Frank stickers and writes for the Portales News-Tribune. Contact her at:

[email protected]