Who needs the flowery bullshit?

A few years ago, back when "liking" everything that you possibly could on facebook was cool, I, apparently, was not. In fact, it could be said that I had a rather depressing outlook on life because I refused to "like" anything. It had nothing to do with any notion of non-conformity or anything like that- it just simply drove me nuts to see "Johnny Appleseed likes ZOMG IM SUCH A NINJA and 47 other things." I made one exception however, in the case of the CollegeHumor page. The site puts out a ton of funny content every day, and I was in desperate need of some form of procrastination, so it helped a lot.

Now, in our discussions about the meaning of signs and metaphors, and how it affects how we view the world around us, I find myself asking "Why the hell do we need metaphors to begin with?" I mean, don't get me wrong, I am an English major and I understand all too well the value of using these iconic and symbolic phrases to bull-shit my way through a paper, but what purpose do they really serve? If you really think about it, there are very few things that are commonly used in metaphor that could not be more simply put in common language.

For example:                     More simply put, becomes
My love for you is a rose ------------------------------------> I love you a lot.

Boom! Simple, right? Sure, it might be a little more boring and a little less sentimental, but hey, it gets the point across, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of us having language with which to speak simply to express our ideas to other people? While the English student in me recoils at the thought, it is definitely thought-provoking. When did we cross the line into this realm of metaphysical meanings for things, when at one point in human history we grunted at each other to convey important information?

 Anyway, back to the CollegeHumor thing. This question that I'm trying to get at here echoes something that popped up on my facebook so long ago. While other people might have missed it between posts by groups such as "Im glad that I'm not on fire right now" and "Damn, it feels good to be a ganstuh," CollegeHumor put out a rather interesting video about the importance of metaphor in our music. Its worth a laugh if you haven't seen it.

While it could be said that oftentimes, the songs that are portrayed in the above video certainly do illustrate the same idea as the "flowery, poetic bullshit,"  oftentimes, without the metaphor, we would find that we would hate our own music. There is something within that exchange between reality and metaphor that gives more depth to whatever it is one is trying to say. That is not to say that a metaphor says more than a nice description would. I could certainly, as an writer, describe in detail something comparable to how my love "is a rose." While it would have all of the same information and perhaps many of the connotations, it still falls short.

So to repeat the question, why do we use metaphor? Why do we use signs at all, rather than just "telling it like it is." As Saussure notes, the only real thing that gives  a word meaning is its difference in comparison to other words. Some words don't even really have a real tangible meaning. So to put this idea on a slightly larger scale, perhaps what gives metaphor its value is also its difference in comparison with other means of describing things. In his famous song Long Black Train, Josh Turner could very easily have simply said "You don't have to give in to your addictions." While the idea would certainly be true, it would not have been made very popular in the music industry. What gives the idea value is that, in comparing the metaphor to how we would, for example, explain the meaning to a friend, that there is a difference between the two. More importantly, that the difference could even be different between people. I could certainly take the meaning of the song in a completely different direction than someone trying to overcome a drug addiction.

In the end, Metaphor is important, because nobody wants to hear John Mayer sing about how his songs are going to get him laid.