interesting 13 years ago

in Dec. 2007 to be exact, per TiR's notes

an Empson quote:

I have often been puzzled by finding it necessary to go and look things up in order to find machinery to express distinctions that were already in my mind.

from chapter VIII, herein

vs. even more interesting, today?  E's next thought:

Such machinery is necessary, partly so as to look as if you knew what you were talking about, partly as a matter of ‘style,’ and partly from the basic assumption of prose that all the parts of speech must have some meaning. (These three give the same idea with increasing generality.)  Otherwise, one would be continually stating relations between unknown or indefinite objects, or only stating something about such relations, themselves unknown and indefinite.

Yea a third, hellish path exists, which TiR speculates E may have known.  You constantly look things up AND find that objects and their relations (nevertheless / consequently) become increasingly unknown and impossible meaningfully to express.  

Hopefully however, you can draw upon the "machinery" to hold up your end of the conversation with sufficient aplomb to keep your cover from getting blown.

Found while researching the concept of aesthetic perplexity