(disclaimer: I think I was more about digesting and mixing
the text assigned for the class into the thoughts I have(partly because I have
fever right now and everything that I read kinda mingles together), so if I
seem to misrepresent what the text said or talk about them too little, don’t
hesitate to point out and/or fill in. Thanks J
)
*
I think about Sound a lot. Everybody is surrounded by Sound
all the time. Some sound is Noise, some sound is Music, Some Language. I walk
by a group of Asian people I wasn’t paying attention to, and I accidentally
eavesdrop on their conversation in Korean about the white kids in the class they
hate. Sometimes it’s Chinese and I do not understand what they are saying. They
are just noise to me.
The thought of Sound-language depresses me sometime.
I sometime feel paranoid about the sound that I make. I
worry if I am making noise and everyone is nodding/pretending to understand
because they are nice. Sometimes I feel like I’m a goldfish in a tank, trying
to make sound but can’t. I open my mouth and maybe a few bubbles arise. My mumble
is my bubble.
초혼(招魂)
산산이 부서진 이름이여!
허공 중(虛空中)에 헤어진 이름이여!
불러도 주인(主人) 없는 이름이여!
부르다가 내가 죽을 이름이여!
심중(心中)에 남아 있는 말 한 마디는
끝끝내 마저 하지 못하였구나.
사랑하던 그 사람이여!
사랑하던 그 사람이여!
붉은 해는 서산(西山)
마루에 걸리었다.
사슴의 무리도 슬피 운다.
떨어져 나가 앉은 산(山) 위에서
나는 그대의 이름을 부르노라.
설움에 겹도록 부르노라.
설움에 겹도록 부르노라.
부르는 소리는 비껴 가지만
하늘과 땅 사이가 너무 넓구나.
선 채로 이 자리에 돌이 되어도
부르다가 내가 죽을 이름이여!
사랑하던 그 사람이여!
사랑하던 그 사람이여!
Like the poem above that cannot be read by people who cannot
read Korean, Noise is indecipherable. Noise is non-symbol, the lacking
interiority/meaning.
The poem above is written in Japanese occupation era during
which Korea was a colony of Japan. The poem is about a Korean ritual called 초혼 (cho-hon (I think Romanization is also interesting regarding
the issue of representation, commodity that Fred Moten speaks of)), which is a
ritual that is performed by the closest friend/lover who is attending the
passing of a person right after the person draws his/her last breath. During this
ritual, the friend/lover shout out the name of the person passing away at the
top of his/her lung three times, hoping to bring back the soul into the body of
the dying person.
The poem takes place after the ritual, after its failure which
posits the shouting of the name a mere Noise, as the name is no longer
possessed. It is empty.
산산이 부서진 이름이여!
허공 중(虛空中)에 헤어진 이름이여!
O the Name that is
broken into pieces!
The name that shredded
into mist in the midst of empty air!
Not to go on about this Korean poem that potentially has
connection only in my brain, but what I find interesting in the poem is that there
is/was never a person in the poem. The lamentation just orients around the name
and the loss of it, the language becoming noise that floats and dissipates into
the air. And the poem itself tries to be
a shout with its exclamation marks.
부르는 소리는 비껴 가지만
하늘과 땅 사이가 너무 넓구나.
The sound I call out floats
along
Yet the sky and the
land are too far apart
The Name becomes Past tense, even though the sound is
present, floating.
The substance body of the person is lying there, yet the
name, the meaning is shredded, turning into a thing of a past that no longer
exists in present moment. The ghost of the name, the noise will float, but only
to linger in the limbo, between the sky and the land.
Often the time pleasant materiality of sound, music can signify
transcendence (meaning) but yet, in this poem, since the name is shouted,
screamed with urgency, it just becomes a noise. The noise cannot reach the
sky/heaven/transcendence, bound down with the materiality of noise.
What a noise.
What is noise.
Some Korean Patriotic lit. criticism, which is a prominent genre
in Korean literary critic circle, “deciphers” this poem as the ode to Korea,
the land lost, the language lost (Japanese emperor decreed a law that bans
speaking and writing in Korean in public sphere during Japanese occupation era).
They might be on to something although I’m opposed to making the poem into
positive location of such “meanings” as the emptiness of the poem which is all
exclamation and lamentation without recipient is what makes it interesting; Noise
is an object, while Language implies some subjectivity, control, the Authorial
Intention. Name and Language is Power. Possession.
My friend jokingly said Korean alphabets looks like sticks,
circles, and boxes. He is right. They are.
Alexandra Wallace says Asians sound like “Chingchong
Linglong Tingtong”. She is kinda right.
Interiority is something that can be possessed by Language,
Standard English. Likewise, “Who can afford sincerity? It is an expensive
monocle.” (from Xeclogue by Lisa Robertson)
Performance is one mode to respond to the Mainstream
narrative that strips away the possibility of interiority from the
non-mainstream narrative.
In this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulEMWj3sVA
the Asian man, by utilizing his exaggerated accent, his gender (and
objectification of Alexandra Wallace), imposing false interiority/meaning in
ChingChong language, disrupts the power dynamic.
I first encountered
English as noise. I had to decipher it, however. The system of economy in which
Korea depends on export to America demands it. Korea has to be part of the network of English.
In the classroom where 60 kids are filling in the room size
barely bigger than my apt livingroom, we would listen to the noise of English
and write down what we could get out of it.
English was given interiority, as if a priori.
I think I connect this idea to the line in In the Break, “The
value of the sign, tis necessary relation to the possibility of (a universal
science of and a universal) language, is only given in the absence or
supercession of, or the abstraction from, sounded speech its essential
materiality—its essential materiality is rendered ancillary by the crossing of
an immaterial border or by differentializing inscription”
Koreans do have their version of ChingChong; Koreans do joke
about how American sounds like “shala shala” , yet if an American approaches
them in subway asking for direction, they get visibly embarrassed that they cannot
speak the language, and often run away (I’m not kidding). Universal language of English is just something
you should automatically know, not the sound one has to register before understanding
it.
Before moving on to Tracie Morris, I think I want to point
out one more thing about Korean education of English since it seems to reveal so
much about the power of abstract universality. The English speaker in the
recorded cassette tape was also all white, and English textbook never mentioned
of race. Every characters in the textbook wore same style of clothes (tshirt,
sweat shirt, jeans), and of course were gender normative(I remember blond “Susan”
with pony tail, skirt who hangs out with “Bob” who wears baseball hat) ,
everybody belonged in the same symbolic network of singular America in Korean English
text book.
Although it is ridiculous I feel like this is also relevant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JhuOicPFZY
In this video, Peter, by obtaining the common symbol/indicator--
the mustache – for Italian, assumes that
he has entered the symbolic network, Language and thinks he can speak Italian. The materiality of certain symbol replaces the
non-mainstream language because they are the same exchange value. Maybe I am
making a stretch, but I don’t think it is not an accident that this event takes
place in Italian deli store.
Then where does minor language/symbolic network dwells in
the enormity of mainstream language, in which they are no more than noise,
substance, mustache/chinky eyes and etc.
Another example that shows the abstract power of Universal
language is Chinese government enforcing the law that requires that the
minority group use Mandarin, the mainstream Chinese language, except in the
tourist town. In the presence of tourist, they can use their exotic dialect, where their
language is commodity.
This video is another good one that points out the nature of
this industry: the mmhmm, as it becomes empty noise, ornament, it becomes a
commodity, and anonymous laughter(that is devoid or race, it is universal
laughter) can be added to complete its consumption by the middle-upper class watcher.)
I see that Tracie Morris is resisting such abstracted power
of Universal English that seemingly exists a priori, ahistorical. She repeats “It all started when we were
brought here as slaves from Africa”, which seems to represent a common narrative
that seems empty, just stating a fact, like the line in textbook. Yet the way
she stutters, repeats, the materiality of the word, her tonality becomes more
prominent, and the interaction of different elements in her speech overrides
the anonymity of “we” and the flatness of the sentence. The sentence is no
longer easily digested as it would have been on a textbook which invests a
chapter or less about slavery issue.
Also, Morris resists the issue of representation, the plethora
of “Nonfiction” that supposedly delivers the experience to the readers as long
as they are willing to pay for the paperback price with her “Coda to my great
grand aunt meets a bush supporter”. Because of the title that seems to depict
specific anecdote, I expected narrative in this piece, yet Morris repeats the
word “Jesus” in different notes, rhythm. Her performance does not lend itself
to the audience in the way that those commercial memoirs does.
The inconsistency of the rhythm and notes make an opposition
to “pleasant music” which can be commodified, reproduced too. (maybe I’m
bringing in too much family guy, but I like reading that show :P I find this
clip to be playing with the unpleasant noise and the content (“guilty”) can
indicate homosexual orientation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6zDygujgj4
)The performance of Morris cannot be separated from her presence in the pace,
her speaking through microphone.
To go back to my self-indulgent anecdotes (which I hope are
relevant) :
Back in Texas, my Indian friend can speak in various “race”,
and he used to prank call business esstablishments in his white, black, asian and indian voices to see how
different reaction he could get. He learned all those accents growing up as
Indian American under his parents, first generation immigrants. His mother
worked at factory and she learned how to speak English through the black
coworker. My friend tells me how he enjoys watching people getting perplexed at
the moment she opens her mouth, speaking “ghetto”.
“Why do you talk like that?!” they would ask, since her
presence and her speech seem so contrary, irreducible to the abstract
body/archetype of Indian woman.
Last summer, I was told that my Korean sounds like Chinese
immigrant’s by some random Korean lady in Korea.
I think about Sound a lot:
Sound is outrageous.
Poetry is outrageous.
Drama is necessary.
Exhibitionism is necessary.
But let's go back to our initial question: What is Sound? What is noise?
But let's go back to our initial question: What is Sound? What is noise?
Thoughts?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMoten writes in the introductory chapter of In the Break: “at issue here is the precariousness of empathy and the uncertain line between witness and spectator” (3). That is to say, in order to create three-dimensional violence and gore on a two-dimensional plane, one must relay on other tools in order for the audience to genuinely grasp the terror. In order to do this, writes Moten, one must “defamiliarize the familiar” (3). There must also be alienation, engagement, transference of identities and emotions, etc. How better than sound? Often, when one is reading to oneself, the reading is silent, completely interior. (This, of course, is taking out the context of Tracie Morris singing, which would be impossible to re-create without our friend the ear drum.) Sound, then, can be created and magnified through silence, which is fascinating, and which is where my tangent is going to go.
ReplyDeleteRepetition is something of which both Moten and Morris are obvious fans. The stuttering/repetition from Morris in “It all started…” is brilliant. I tried to imagine the words out of the context of external sound, but internal interpretation. “It all started” repeats, stutters, slips, and reverts back to a sentence that both builds upon and destroys itself. The sentence “It all started when we were brought here as slaves from Africa” is repeated over and over, a slight mar to the sentence when Morris grates over the first few syllables and then cannot seem to finish it, almost as an unrelenting tick. On the page, these tics, these interruptions, are clearly seen. They are like little frustrations in and of themselves, almost as the words are trying to go back to their origins. Couple that with the sordid history of its implications, and the internal sound rings as it builds upon itself in a sort of terrible loveliness.
Sound as interiority relies on more work from the reader, who has their own sentimentality connected to different objects. These object relations cannot easily be erased, but can be made to stand in the background as the greater object is allowed to come to the forefront.
To put my own classmates on the spot in my interior associations (and, please, poets, correct me if I am completely off-base), I’m reminded of Lauro’s work, of his in-line slashes, and Trish’s curious “framing” (for lack of better word) symbols in particular. I’ve been thinking about our workshop discussion, about what purpose they serve, and what sound they might be making. To be honest, these were not concepts I had not given much thought to before. In my own conception, I have determined to read Lauro’s slashes as more of a hiccup —this is not the same slight pause as a comma, or a longer contemplative dash, but more of a structure of friction by which the poet is asking the reader to consider both sides of the line: its equalities and inequalities, position, and statement. This has a sound to me, and it hovers between a stutter and a tick that in their understated presence resonate the line a little harder. Of Trish: I read the barcodes, the knots, the archways as a sort of portal by which the reader is transported. Of barcodes I hear forced air trying to get through, of knots I hear a muffle, and of archways I hear an exhalation. These are all “frames” by which the poet indicates where her speaker is located, and where the reader should be. These are, to me, synonymous with a sort of poetic connective tissue. Of course, can these poems exist without such devices? —certainly, just as poems can exist without punctuation, line breaks, etc. It’s just that these are incredible tools by which the poetic object-at-hand is better projected and separated from any individual sentimentality or idea.
These are really great thoughts, Jiyoon--thank you. (And also, feel better soon! I'm writing this with a cold--not as bad as a fever, but definitely annoying.) I was particularly struck by your account of the Korean death-ritual and the ways in which it intersects with the last piece Morris performed in Tuscon. You say of the death-ritual: "The substance body of the person is lying there, yet the name, the meaning is shredded, turning into a thing of a past that no longer exists in present moment."
ReplyDeleteTo add to that, and to offer a bit of a counterpoint, my first thoughts on hearing "It all started when we were brought here as slaves from Africa" were of Freud, and the way, according to his theories, a psychic wound must be voiced and re-voiced, obsessively told again and again, perhaps a little differently each time, until some kind of relief occurs and the wound is overcome and fades into the past rather than torturing and victimizing one in the present. Morris repeats and shreds the sentence, like you said, until its "meaning" dissipates and words become the very 'sounds' of grief that are beyond signification. There's something similar to both Freud's talking cure and an an exorcism here, but I think it's definitely capable of being read much in the same way as the Korean ritual you described. It definitely *is* ritualistic, to say the least.
To add in a bit of the Moten here (which has been digested and certainly paraphrased)--what strikes me immediately is Moten's thought that every particular (objective) recitation of slavery's evil always involves some sort of repression. It is as if, for Moten, talking isn't enough if the way that one relates one's pain is simply to give a straightforward account of physical / psychic wounds: "This happened, then his happened, etc". For Moten, this simply objectifies suffering, makes it into spectacle.
But there is no way, at least for me, that one can 'objectively' experience Morris's last sound-piece. By doing violence to the process of signification of the simple(objective) sentence, "It all started when we were brought here as slaves from Africa," by turning it into something more-than-speech, she brings the listener into another dimension in which s/he can experience an objective event as real subjective pain and discomfort. Performativity is certainly involved here, but my reading of Moten suggests that pain must not simply be related to be relieved--it must be enacted and performed as well. It must be exorcized.
DeleteThere are many more valences to discuss, I think, but rather than dwell on other 'interpretations' I'd like to add the thought that, for me, sound--rather than being less-than-significant or hollow--is always 'more-than,' always excessive in some way. Language that is not understood is one thing; however, language that turns back into sound, the way the Morris piece does, is another. I think a 'final' way that we can read Morris's sound-pieces--perhaps--is as enacting the process of poetry itself, in reverse. For me, poetry is something that is skimmed off the surface of primal sound, so to take a sentence that is, as you say, flat and declarative and definitely "non-poetic", to shred it, and to turn it back into a cry of grief is to reverse the 'normal' poetic process of turning some sort of primal sound into words.
Finally, to bring in the Benjamin excerpt, I think that Benjamin's interpretation of the Klee's angel staring into the past might be the very thing the Morris and Moten pieces are struggling against. Benjamin's angel is a witness to the past and is trapped by the past--he can't move his wings. Morris and Moten both seem to suggest that bearing witness is just another way of being stuck, and remembering isn't enough. Psychic grief must really be enacted, performed, or exorcized in a radical way if one is to move forward, and this is one thing that poetry can do: not simply bear witness, but shred the past and make it into fodder for the future. Maybe...
WHAT I LOVE TALKING ANIMALS i fear and dream of them.
ReplyDeletereal response coming soon.
Jiyoon, what a great post, I found your thoughts really interesting, thanks. I think sound is like your fever. It is here and it will be gone, and over a lifetime the cycle keeps recurring. The philosopher in me just goes back to the whole if a tree fell in a forest thing. I always wanted to believe it makes a sound even if no one heard it, but I know it doesn’t. Sound is like a trap door; it disappears into itself. It is performative in as much as it needs a sensory audience to exist.
ReplyDeleteWhile sound is not the only way people express thought, identity, etc. It is one of those key indicators. But over 90% of our communication comes from the non-verbal variety. So does sound become most effective when it is accompanied by the visual?
When I was listening to Morris, even when she wasn’t singing, she was singing. I found the experience to be calming but disorienting. I kept wanting to see the words she was saying. At one point, in her reading she commented on how her reading of a poem changes during each reading, but if they are different words is the sound the same, is the poem the same? I often notice when we read our poems in workshop, everyone follows the page. Why if the nature of reading aloud is to experience the poem as sound?
I lost track of the words Morris was reading. It all became this beautiful hum. And I got lost in the hum, but would try and wake myself up to write down the words, so I could have something concrete “to say.” I was forcing myself to construct meaning, which in turn would be used to construct a performance of myself as poet, as student.
It is probably no surprise I agree with what I understood of Molten. Our identity, and all it encompasses, ethnicity, culture, gender and on and on, is a scripted visual and auditory performance that holds little meaning outside its time and place.
Performances and sound vanish, but they leave something behind. It’s hard to trace, hard to chase. The space where something disappears is what I find most intriguing, and I loved Jiyoon’s poetic example that the sound of a persons name said loudly can stop them from fading out of existence. The way Morris used sound for me kind of erased the word or the poem. It is something that circles the trapdoor between existence and non-existence. For me, I think my fascinations with the symbols around my poem, using French or repetition are all my ways of trying to capture the space where things creep out of existence, or outside of what we know as meaning or understanding.
I really enjoyed the Morris video; I found the way she did the "It all started when we were brought here as slaves from Africa," to be really affecting and even thrilling in the way it plays with our expectations of what poetry should sound like. It's interesting to me that Trish mentioned the idea of sound being cyclical, because in a way the importance of sound in poetry seems cyclical as well. Poetry comes out of a lyrical mode that relied entirely on being spoken, then moved into a world where writers sat in their rooms and wrote poetry that was published but not necessarily performed - or at least, not performed by the poet. And now, especially with technological advances that allow us to record everything, poetry seems to be very sound-focused again.
ReplyDeleteWhat strikes me most, though, about the way that Morris uses sound is its ephemerality. Yes, that video exists for posterity, but that one performance is unique. She will never again perform it in that exact way again; the physical human voice would never allow it. But even more importantly, no one else will be able to reproduce that piece. When Morris read-sings, she has complete control over her material in that moment, in that it cannot be accessed in the same way by a man or by me, who has no range or vocal power whatsoever.
In his introduction, Moten writes of the Douglass piece, "In this sense utterance and response, seen together as encounter, form a kind of call wherein Hester's shrieks improvise both speech and writing." Isn't this, in some way, what Morris is doing as well? Especially since the poetry that she is often singing/performing comes out of other traditions or from other places - think of the way she reads the Poe or how she incorporates Ginsberg's voice into her own. Morris's "shrieks," by straddling lines between music and poetry, take on an otherness that somehow manages to be writing and speech as well as song.
And finally, because I am a nerd for whom everything comes back to music, this talk about sound reminds me of classical music. I love atonal music, and I love "corrupted" music wherein a composer uses another composer's melodies to troubling effects. For example, in Shostakovich's 11th Symphony (which literally gives me goosebumps everytime I hear it), he uses original songs from the revolution to tell his musical version of the 1905 uprisings in Russia. By using these strange "shrieks" of time, along with music that literally shrieks in places, he attempts to reconcile sounds across time and medium - instrument vs. voice, the original Russian revoltions vs. the corrupt version of the USSR in which he wrote the piece. If I'm not mistaken, this pretty close to the way Morris is using original texts in new ways through the use of sound. And isn't this what the Benjamin thesis is all about?
i concur w/ your 2nd paragraph, that struck me too when i was listening to her: how could she possibly replicate this performance? but isn't that part of its power, how singular/ephemeral it is? i don't know. i also tried to imagine how it would look on the page but couldn't. i wouldn't want to see it even if i could.
Deletealso whenever i think of atonal music that is still 'musical' and not totally atonal (but kindof is), i always come back to the band daughters, this song in particular: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psw2J7Gl7gQ especially that ending bit of feedback/guitar scratches.
Do you know Berio's Sinfonia, Beth? I'm guessing you do, but if not, it's a really cool example of an entire symphony built off "corrupted" material. Check it out and let's discuss.
DeleteOh, I am going to have to check that out. Thanks for the rec, Thade!
Deletethat was a really good post jiyoon.
ReplyDeletewhen watching the morris video i kept thinking about how sound can break down with repetition. for example, when you repeat the word tree and suddenly you're really hearing the sounds of each individual letter and you think about how weird the word tree really is. i mean, tree tree tree tree tree tree, it gets meaningless after awhile, the language breaks down into noise. i kept getting that feeling when watching morris. it's a weird feeling when language breaks down into noise. i like that little dichotomy by the way, language versus noise. i think the talking dog sits in that space right between language and noise. the dog isn't quite just making noise but he isn't quite using language (because he doesn't understand the language; can you use language without understanding what the sounds you're making mean? if you can, is it possible that the knowledge that the noise is language and means something, even if you don't know what the something is, makes it language, whereas the dog doesn't know the noises he is making are anything other than just noises?), so it's this weird space where the dog is saying something we find very cute/meaningful whereas to the dog it's just a learned sound which elicits treats/praise. he was conditioned to make those noises, they don't signify for him, but it's language nonetheless. there's this video online of (i think) an italian guy singing in fake american english (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00). it really kindof does sound like english even though it's just gibberish/noise.
i don't know. i keep thinking about how sound can complicate language by breaking it down into its material components. at the same time, sound aids in memory (think of how we learn the ABCs; i can't say them without singing them). sound can both solidify and break language. i don't know how that works. i guess there is some sort of tipping point. megan uses the 'defamiliarize the familiar' quote, which is exactly what i think i'm getting at. noise can do violence to language, can break it down, language can be shifted into noise through repetition.
Jiyoon, thank you for this stimulating and thoughtful post; I hope you are feeling better too.
ReplyDeleteI find myself going back and forth between the meaningful contributions thus far, and taking note of particular phrases--those that sparked certain thoughts or riffs of my own and which I hope to weave together with my reactions/ thoughts to the assigned reading and performance. These will be my modest ruminations on what I see as the core relationship between sound and language (how language fails us and sound and performance can fill-in this void, can communicate from a more primal place in the humanself:
"Often the time pleasant materiality of sound, music can signify transcendence (meaning) but yet, in this poem, since the name is shouted, screamed with urgency, it just becomes a noise. The noise cannot reach the sky/heaven/transcendence, bound down with the materiality of noise."--Jiyoon
*
"For me, poetry is something that is skimmed off the surface of primal sound, so to take a sentence that is, as you say, flat and declarative and definitely "non-poetic", to shred it, and to turn it back into a cry of grief is to reverse the 'normal' poetic process of turning some sort of primal sound into words."--Thade
*
"Sound is like a trap door; it disappears into itself. It is performative in as much as it needs a sensory audience to exist."--Trish
The failure of language to convey what is said and what is not said and what exists in between the words is something that fascinates me; I see it as a paradox of sorts. As poets we write with the false conviction that we can grab language by the tail and nail it to our pages so that it can sing for us; but more often than not language fails us--as it is often the case when employing language to speak or bear witness or condemn the violence that humans commit against humans and which I think is at the core of both Morris' poetry and Moten's ideas.
And I am reminded of Juan Gelman's (whom I've learned so much from--thank you Joyelle for including him in our readings and from whom I inherited the "/"--more on this later)response to Theodor Adorno's statement (and I'm parraphrasing) that there could be "no more poetry after Auschwitz." Gelman states (and I translate):
ReplyDelete"For years I thought Adorno's mistake was in commission, that he forgot a "as before;" that there could be no more poetry as before Auschwitz, as before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as before the Argentinian genocide. And now I believe there is no "after Auschwitz," after Hiroshima or Nagasaki, after the Argentinian genocide, that we inhabit a time of "enduring," that massacres happen over and over again in some forsaken corner of the planet, that there exists a genocide that kills more slowly than the gas chamber but by no means less brutal, a genocide called hunger, that in the just passed century there has not been a single day of peace on this earth."
i take the liberty to quote Gelman extensively because I believe this quotes gets at the core of this issue of sound: in the face of inhuman pain and suffering and also inexplicable joy, the language we employ fails massively, poetry is thus pushed forward--or perhaps backwards--towards a more primal sound/performance that can fill the void left by language.
When I hear Morris' performance/ poetry I am immediately jarred. I like to believe that language can be a consoling act, that it can be grabbed and employed but Morris reminds me that sheer sound is much more powerful ( I think jazz, I think birds chirping, babies crying, i think wind, i think sheer complete and utter silence, I think of the time I was so stoned I started bawling upon hearing who knows what song).
I'd like to end with a personal story: when my mother was born in the early 70's in a remote Mexican village, having been conceived out of wed-lock she was born out of sight from the town and her family. She was born in a pen where they kept for the animals; the umbilical cord cut by her 9-year old brother.Raised by her blind grandmother and her older siblings (her mother was a rural teacher, often gone for weeks and having to trek 10-12 walking hours to reach the village where she was assigned to teach)hiding her was not a problem--it was the sounds of her crying that were hard to muffle. Her blind grandmother was told that the cries werethose of a baby goat. When I have heard those goats cry; I am struck by how similar they do sound to babies crying.
When I hear the line "It all started" I am brought back to the image of my mother crying--the sheer sound and how language fails me to convey something beautiful; an antidote of words to combat and comfort that pain and ugliness of social stigma, but again I cannot. hearing morris reminds me that that primal sound/ that reannacment of the pain may in itself hold the key to beauty I seek. Even so I still believe in words and language and still seek out something beautiful.
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as the / is concerned you are right Megan. For me the slash is an instrument of tension, something to slow the reader down, to violate, to hurt his or her relationship with the poem, it is for me something monster and beautiful at the same time.