Words have failed me so many times. They are a constant source of disappointment. They sound in my head so harmoniously for a short moment, but then become more and more ephemeral, flooded by all the fleeting perceptions crowded in my mind. When I want to transform them into their corporeal form of signs on paper (or rather on my computer's screen....) they look so crude and awkward. Hardly ever am I satisfied with my words. Maybe this is one of the reasons I started this blog. To make them behave, to master them, control them finally. I doubt I'll meet with much success in this endeavor.
Sometimes words carry me away to places I never wanted to go. They whisper to me "this sounds so good, so interesting... this must be what you want to say, what you feel..." This inevitably leads to trouble. You cannot let them take over your actual feeling and ideas. You may find that the road back to where you started does not exist anymore.
Sometimes I hear or read a few words, a short phrase, and lose my breath. I am struck with awe, with total amazement how these few words expressed so much for me at this very moment. Maybe a few days later or earlier I wouldn't get it, I would miss it completely but this is the time for me to attach meaning to it, possibly very different from the meaning or meanings that the author had in mind... And this is the true power of words, how they speak to us in many tongues though expressed in one language, as contradictory as it may sound.
Example. I've been haunted by a certain state of mind that would come back to torture me, usually triggered by something different each time, yet I never found words to describe the feeling. Then.... "when this began I had nothing to say and I got lost in the nothingness inside of me... When all the vacancy the words revealed is the only real thing that I've got left to feel." There is a part of me that never recovered from the times that I felt like this. And now I have a name for it. Is an experience more real, easier to deal with when you have words to describe it? Or does it gain power to stay with you forever, invincible, always lurking in the shadows of your mind to attack when you lower your defences?
I have just come across a statement that sounds relevant to what I said before:"The interdependence of thought and speech makes it clear that languages are not so much a means of expressing truth that has already been established, but are a means of discovering truth that was previously unknown. Their diversity is a diversity not of sounds and signs but of ways of looking at the world."Kerényi, Carl; translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (1996). Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, xxxi.
2 comments:
I often wonder about how human relationships wd be different if we were all telepathic - with instant access to other people's thoughts. I suspect we'd be horrified at what people really think, and confused at the incoherent, half-formed nature of such thoughts. Sooner or later, mental barriers would have to evolve, simply in order to preserve everyone's sanity.
So the inefficiency and clumsiness of human spoken/written language might, in its way, be a blessing in disguise. Yes, misunderstandings dog us in daily life (especially in my environment, where the vast majority of my interactions involve one or other of us speaking a foreign language), but can't that sometimes be a boon, giving us an opportunity to re-write our past a little bit, wipe at least a part of the slate clean so we can try again? The transforming power of the white lie. :)
The true challenge, then, is to perfect our thoughts. If we cannot do that there is little chance that words we use to express our ideas will ever become precise enough. On the other hand, don't words help us make sense of our thoughts sometimes? Even if to achieve that they need to transform the original message to some extent...
Post a Comment