I blame language for my dental bills. A recent anthropological theory posits that the equipment necessary to produce the full range of human speech (a tongue positioned in the mouth and pharynx and a low larynx) is derived from morphology adapted for swallowing in other primates. "The human supralaryngeal airway (i.e., the tongue, pharynx, oral cavity, etc.) has become specialized for speech production at the expense of swallowing and respiration. Indeed, our teeth have become so crowded because of the reduction of the length of the body of the mandible and maxilla that we suffer the risk of serious infection and death due to impaction of teeth." What this tells me is two things: one, language is an immensely powerful phenomenon and two, language is dangerous. I say: vive le danger! Because language is also terribly, wonderfully exciting. No human, except the dullest of the dull, can resist its charms. The question is, do I speak language or does language speak me? Each language Chinese, Japanese, Bengali, Blackfoot, Malagasy, Zulu, Tulu, Panjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Dutch is an ocean into which we are born. It is the medium in which we live. It shapes our thinking as much as the water shapes the shape of the fish. It is full of banks, schools, shoals, pods, and adverbs. When we speak or write we move through different depths and temperatures of meaning. For some, writing is a way to go deeper into the language, further and further out to its misty and elusive horizons. This is because writing is largely private. Talking is public. Whoever has felt not a little like they were undressing when they opened their mouths to speak? To share something. To assert something. To confess something. Something very different occurs when we speak than when we write. Something truly vital, truly dynamic occurs when we talk. Words cease being a cerebral, symbolic system of arbitrary signs and carry a weight of emotion. I have heard Hamlet performed by at least six different leading actors, including Richard Burton, Lawrence Olivier, Mel Gibson, Nicol Williamson, Keven Kline and Kenneth Branaugh. I have heard many different Ophelias, many different Claudius', many different Gertrudes. Each time the play is different. One actor might interpret a line with acerbity and fire, another more coolly, with insouciance and wit. Lines that had to be loudly declaimed in a theater may have been spoken sotto voce in a movie where a sensitive microphone enlarged the opportunities for interpretation. When I open my mouth to form a word I feel I am sculpting air. More than that: I feel my breath inflate each word like a being with a skeleton of letters and give it an incandescent life of struggle and flame. Struggle to mean something, create a sensation, persuade; to charm, to enchant, to illumine an image with heat and light in the furnace of its vowels. Each word is a mystery, a shell of sound with a meaning inside. The interior of a word is sometimes a cool, sometimes a warm place. Sometimes it's like the chambers of a heart, full of blood and reality, and sometimes it is a ductile fluctuation, a porous insistence, an extravagant tattoo. Together in a string words can create worlds, events, phenomena, visions. There is a joy in jumping from a plane, in diving into a body of water from a high cliff. The exhilaration of taking a risk, of discovering a new sensation. Something very akin to the exhilaration of speech.
|
Thinking Outloudby John Olson