Trapped in a Cliché

I usually try to avoid clichés like the plague, but they seem almost unavoidable...on so many levels.

As a twenty something university student about to head on a semester abroad, having just decided to keep a travel-blog...I, myself, seem trapped in a cliché! Consider that the idiom "Onwards and Upwards" has been a cliché since the 1800's. I found the irony of this whole student travel-blog situation quite alarming. Naturally, I started to over-analyze it.

I had forgotten how many useful quips qualify as cliché: "what goes around, comes around"..."too little, too late"..."two wrongs don't make a right"..."it takes two to tango"..."never say never"..."so the plot thickens"..."only time will tell" ...

The list is huge!

Maybe I'm just channeling grade 12 English, but I have a knee-jerk aversion to clichés. Overuse seems to devalue the thought, meaning and significance of idioms and acts. But on further reflection, what's so terrible about a cliché? Although over-used and abused, the cliché remains a useful device in conversations. As Terry Pratchett puts it in Guards! Guards!, “Clichés are the spanners and the screwdrivers in the toolbox of language." What's the difference between something insightful and something idiotic?

I think it all comes down to the subject and the context:

If there was a movie in which a tidal wave was bearing down on a populated beach, and the character yelled "Head for the Hills!", it would be a cliché. If this was 'real-life', and I was actually on a beach, and there was actually a tidal wave, yelling "Head for the Hills!" would be a great suggestion.

It seems that when the subject and context are genuine and sincere, there is no cliché. However, when the subject and context are contrived, and presented as stroke of originality or creativity, it become cliché. The wiki entry for 'cliché' has a great quote from Salvador Dali: "The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot."

Although it seems like spoken clichés are unavoidable, people are much less prone to be caught living a cliché. By my reckoning, as long as I'm aware that everything I do has been done before, and thus lacks innovation or invention, and do not pretend otherwise... This blog, as well as myself, should be in the clear.

So...Here's to creativity without the pretense of innovation! AYHSMB!