My tongue is in my hand…

Language

Posted on: April 1, 2008

A language is a system of visual, auditory, or tactile symbols of communication and the rules used to manipulate them.-wikipedia def.

I love language. This is why I love reading, why I love music, why I love hearing people’s stories, history, conversation, writing. The words we choose to define ourselves, to describe our lives, shape us and the way we see ourselves, the way we see others, the way we see the world. When you read a story (fiction or non) words are given to a story, the words given, the language, shape how the reader takes the story, along with what ever the reader has within them to shape their take on the story as well. Depending on how you feel about discussing stories and language, you would either love or hate to take a lit class with me. I love discussion.

I search for my self (and people I know) in stories, in lyrics, in music. I like to see how someone else describes love, hurt, loss, fun, motherhood, friendship, family, sex, marriage…it feeds my language for my story, for my life. This is why I’ll write dozens upon dozens of poems, letters, and journals about the same thing…I just want to find the right words…I don’t have to resolve anything, I just need to know what it is, what words go with it.

With music, I like how the instrumental part shapes the way you take the words. You can take the same lyrics and put it with different instrumentals and it feels different. Though it’s about the same thing at the core, it looks different, it sounds different, it makes you feel different because of the language that presented it. And when there are no lyrics, there are images, scenes acted out in my mind, landscapes, colors, lighting…. How many songs are about loss, heartbreak, cheating lovers, and “the one”. How many different ways can we say the same thing, century after century is defined only by how many people say something about it…I love the interconnectedness of humanity through language, through music…

Leave a comment