Liminal Wordsmith

Richard Lanham’s Style: An Anti-Textbook argues that writing is never just about what we say. It is about how we choose to say it. The word “style” doesn’t mean decoration. It means self-preservation. Every writer, whether they admit it or not, hides behind the rhythm of their sentences, the patterns of their punctuation, the voice they build to protect the person underneath. Style is a shield. It gives form to feeling, distance to vulnerability, control to chaos.

That idea reminds me of the band Twenty One Pilots. Their music wears its mask proudly. Tyler Joseph sings through characters like Blurryface, turning insecurity into performance. Instead of pretending to be fearless, he creates a space where fear can exist safely, framed by melody and metaphor. The act of styling the pain gives it shape. It turns what could drown him into something that can float. His voice trembles, but it does so in rhythm. The sound itself becomes a survival tactic.

Lanham believed that to write well, we have to accept that all language is performance. There is no “plain” or “honest” way to speak. Even simplicity is a choice, a kind of costume. Twenty One Pilots seem to understand this instinctively. Their songs don’t try to hide the struggle. They invite it in, let it sit beside them, then wrap it in a structure that feels almost like prayer. Every lyric, every repetition, is a negotiation between who they are and who they need to be to survive.

Style, in that sense, is not the opposite of truth. It is the means through which truth can breathe without collapsing. To write, to sing, to create at all, is to admit that the self cannot appear in its rawest form and still endure. The mask is not a lie. It is a vessel. It carries the fragile parts of us to the surface, lets them move, lets them live another day.

Maybe that’s what style really is. A way to say the truth without breaking from it. A way to survive being seen.