Why Passive Voice

Throughout my writing you will on several occasions find that I will use the phrase "passive voice". You may wonder what the hell I'm on about, constantly referring to things as passive voice.

Passive voice entered my life just about the same day Mr. Cunningham entered my life. Cunningham was amongst the few people I actually liked during my high school years; he entered my life as my 9th grade English teacher. Cunnignham being an English teacher was very particular about correcting grammatical mistakes. He has this red pen that he would use to practically sketch on your paper. Rather than circling your mistakes once and saying watch out for so and so, he had the habit of circling each of your reoccurring mistakes one by one. Everyone had their thing, mine was PASSIVE VOICE.

Wikipedia sums up passive voice the following way:

"The passive voice is a grammatical voice in which the subject receives the action of a transitive verb. Passive voice emphasizes the process rather than who is performing the action."

For example instead of saying "John gave Mary a book you say Mary was given a book by John."

It took me some time to understand this passive voice jargon so Cunningham laid it out for me.
Passive voice makes you writing dull and in a way backwards. Instead of writing in an active tone you end up writing in a commentary tone. Its sort of like being re-active rather than pro-active.

Moving on. Fast forward to college.
I hated passive voice.
It made the writing boring and gave me the impression that the author really didn't want to own up to his or her writing.
Red marks automatically starting appearing in front of my eyes until I actually starting marking them myself.

Moving on. Fast forward to now.
I have realized that passive voice is everywhere. It changes forms. Passive voice isn't only a writing thing it's a living thing. Any indefinative action you take, any action you copy, any action to blend in, any action to appear like the social norm resembles passive voice to me.

So as you can see, Mr. Cunningham's red marks on my high school papers have evolved into red splotches that I observe in daily life.

Passive voice is phenomenon that is embraced within our societies. It creates the social norms, the socially accepted and appreciated. Regardless of these societal building blocks, I continue to observe and point out the passive voice that lays beneath myself and society.

Concha Buika

I have this very odd habit.

Whenever I buy a concert ticket in advance I make sure to listen to the music endlessly until the day of the show. I become the guitar, the drums, the bass the voice of the music and believe me I sound amazing in my mind.

I have a Concha Buika concert coming up on the 20th of July. Although a big fan I never purchased a Concha CD, instead I chose to download the songs that I knew I liked. I was a generic Concha fan per say and to be honest with you I really dislike these type of listeners. Those who say they like a specific artist but who only know the artist's mainstream music. This to me is equivalent to the passive voice in writing.

The moment I realized I was in fact a passive listener, I went out and bought every single Concha CD out there. In fact in one of my escapades, I was so mesmerised in my Concha hypnosis that I didn't even realize that I was standing just next to friend of mine that happened to be glaring at the amount of CD's I was just about to purchase. I looked him straight in the eye and had to do a double take to recognize him. He has broken into my Concha zone. Needless to say tapping back into the zone wasn't really that difficult.

Right now I am totally in the zone. I am typing to the rhythm of Solea de Libertad.

Her voice is as raspy as the sound of a rusty nail being unscrewed from a hole...

Sometimes she whines, I liken it to the sound of constipation....

Concha Buika...

Is as furthest away as you can get from 'passive voice' in music.

The Beginning

So I've heard a lot about this blogging business. I follow a couple blogs myself but never really thought of creating my own blog until my friend Canan inspired me.



You see Canan, my dear friend has entered a mid-life crisis twenty years to early. Typically, as per her own blog, she writes to her friends individually to vent about her various problems. She now says she has ridden herself from her issues and claims her blog is her own proof of exposure to the outside world.



'An open exposure of the new Canan she is in the process of creating.'



I don't quite agree with this.



I think Canan still needs to vent and finds blogging to be a convenient way to manifest her thoughts amongst her readers. BRILLIANT.



So yes this will be my new platform. A platform where I will bitch and moan about the daily problems I face, a platform where I will exaggerate my happy moments, a platform where I will discuss issues I have no idea about and claim that I know them and perhaps most importantly a platform where I will overtly express my bias opinions to those who chose to read my blog.



So there dear readers...

Or, so there Acelya (the only person that is currently reading this blog)



I have began my own little blogging voyage destined to be filled with typos and grammatical mistakes. There will however not be passive voice mistakes. Passive voice is as bad in life as it is in writing. I makes everything around it dull and lifeless.