I have this quote over my desk (written on the paper wrapper of a roll of quarters, no less) that I wrote down from some old New Dimensions interview saying "language is a detriment and a barrier to reality (and real experience)"
I struggle with being so dependent upon language for articulating experience. I can not get (it) out my head. I read this story in the new McSweeney's that sortof elucidated that oppressive feeling of language. ("Madness" by Matei Visniec) It was a beautiful "there-was-an-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly" tale in the midst of a bunch of depressing/sullen/self-destructive/dudes. I guess I just reference it because it captured a feeling that I can't put to words, for lack of a better description. I've given up feeling possessive of any emotional currency as culture will pick up on and document it for me. That sounds defeatist but actually I find it very positive. What else captures this feeling? I saw Lexie Mountain Boys at the Stone a few nights ago. There were like ten people there. But I appreciated the general lack of recognizable language over the performance. I just got a ticket to see Meredith Monk's Ascension Variations at the Guggenheim and I am beyond thrilled. Advertising is so rampant here, no surface is really safe from it. It is all mainly text-based, and nearly always English. I was jotting some notes about my thoughts here earlier today as my professor was lecturing about unicode (set mathematical/computer codes for most languages). The full circle (I think) of this post is that many revolutionary/enlightenment punks that I know (myself included) speak to the value of immediate experience, which is totally inhibited by language.
I just went out for a walk, and now return to this post with a slight shift. That of the discriminatory nature of the English language specifically. My linguistic tribe. But I will have to meditate on that some more and return later.
I have been listening to Planningtorock lately, so I'll end with a lyric fragment from her:
"when i think about that thought/ that thought thinks about me" . . .
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3 comments:
Somehow I feel like my post about the lyrics to the new Animal Collective album alienating people are a rejoinder to this post and this way of thinking. In case they're not enough of one, I'll lay it out further: I think language is how we contextualize our experiences, and that it allows for its own set of transcendent experiences, even as it builds what we need to transcend. You've done more traveling to foreign lands than I have. When walking the streets where the default language was alien to you, did you feel more present? Or was your main sensation one of loneliness? Or did you mostly seek out English-speakers?
We are blessed with a rich language, and while we're blessed all the more when there are experiences that we don't have words for, it's worth noting that the psychedelic experiences which come the closest to feeling like absolute reality also give us private words for them as they occur. I know you are familiar with the theory of language evolving from psilocybin usage.
Also remember that the ads that aren't text-based are just appeals to a real base sexuality. Always and forever. Meditate on this.
Also, the most recent epiphany I had was brought about by this David Silverblatt interview with Denis Johnson, where it was stated that, in the latter's books, there is a hope that comes through due to how ecstatic the language is, and that if these events were presented in another way, a more humorless way, there would be no hope at all to be found in the darkness of the events depicted.
I suppose when I have been in non-english countries I responded to the foreign language as tho it were lovely music - new cadences - and only once was really alarmed by being unable to decipher (Italian on a turbulent night flight) I don't think I ever specifically sought out my (native) tongue. But I also really enjoy navigating under constraints. The loneliness I may have felt was unrelated to language.
I really do recognize the value of language to my existence - I just sometimes crave an easier "off" switch, as it makes for a really wonderful occasional experience. I have found it before, but it generally involved ingesting psychotropic substances.
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