Words, Words, Words
I keep getting in trouble by listening too closely, or not closely enough, to what's being said. This we all share; none of us are adequate listeners! Careful listening has become a lost or endangered art in a clamorous and increasingly knuckleheaded age. I vow to try and shut up and listen to that which deserves a hearing. We need to all take this vow, or something like it, and live up to it whenever possible. Then maybe we can continue to evolve creatively, with grace and maybe even healthy ethics. That's asking a lot. I'm gonna keep asking.
This goes back a ways. One of my earliest memories involves my father hollering at our high-strung poodle. "Betsy!" he intoned, "Don't you understand English?!" I puzzled over that for years. So did Betsy.
Public schooling taught me to translate nearly everything being said by figures of authority into an incomprehensible Adult Noise language, which I could tune out at will to focus instead on inner daydreams. (This is also how one gets run over by Greyhound busses. So pay attention.) Strange prisons, those stunted schools.
What came to rescue me were the silent voices heard inside my head whenever I read words printed between the pages of books, and the frowzy vernacular of the streets, where I began to spend as much time as possible. Surrealist literature and powerful extracts of ergot mold helped me to break language into anarchie confetti. The work of putting it back together again will apparently occupy me for the rest of this particular life.
Listening on the street is still a vitally important part of the research process. When I was twelve, there were new words to learn out there. Another way of speaking; every generation has this. However: I had to adapt some of the slang right away even before I'd had a chance to savor its use. "Chicks" and "Dudes" had been exciting syllables I could toss around like lawn darts. Then suddenly the female article was unacceptable, for carefully explained political reasons. "Chicks" was disrespectful, even derogatory. I struggled to eliminate this word from my speech patterns, as I did not want to be saying the wrong things. I took it seriously.
It was 1970. And a fifteen-year-old girl had questioned my very hippest boyhood terminology. Called into question my ethics on account of what I so casually spoke. It was the beginning of a long process of careful consideration, which naturally became entangled in the sloppiest goddamned behavior imaginable. But that's life.
Point is: We began, many of us, to actively question the power of the spoken word, even as it tumbled from our own lips. The women who lived in the Rainbow communes on Hill Street were quick to explain what constituted sexism and sexist behavior. It was for us to make some changes by altering our ways and means. Calling everything and everyone by their rightful names. Refusing to follow standard guidelines for social action, as these were morbidly disrespectful towards all but a few in positions of great power and privilege.
Over the years, some have taken these principles to extremes while carelessly warping the fabric of the struggle. And how suspect the subject itself has gotten! It has become fashionable to dismiss any such awareness of unethical language as "political correctness." This is a term which is applied only to what are called "leftist" politics, despite the famous political correctitude of the likes of Ronald Reagan, Anita Bryant and Jesse Helms. Any way, I think that the questioning of unethical language can be a healthy exercise in individual awareness.
Example: The word "suck." I must have been about sixteen years old when it occurred to me that I was going to have problems with the popular phrase: "That sucks. " This was, in the early 1970s, a fairly new application of a word which had its own history: P.T. Barnum's "sucker born every minute," and any number of putdowns ever since. Why did I elimÃnate it from my own speech habits? It is something I still never say, no matter how disgruntled I may get; and I love to cuss up a storm, with plenty of piss and vinegar. What's wrong with "sucks"?
Let's check you out at birth for a minute . You are expelled from the womb. A manifest drag. Gasping for breath, you try and acclimate. What's the first thing you start looking for, after your first nap in your new frame? Why, you'd like something to suck. Specifically the nipple of the breast of the mother. This is the first meaning, the primal meaning of "suck": NOURISHMENT. ABUNDANCE.
A dozen or so years later and there are hormonal things starting in to happen, with a developing need to eventually seek the comforting embrace of another individual, finding ways to revel in one's age and to interact gracefully with a lover. There are no limits, no calendars, no constrictions to this love. It is the mystery, so slandered and abused, so grossly misunderstood by most societies for thousands of years: HONEST LOVE. SINCERE LOVE. RESPECTFUL LOVE. The sharing of ecstatic love. To kiss. To apply one's lips, touch with the tongue. This would be a noble and worthy nest of meaning for "suck." What could be more precious? More deserving of humble and respectful gratitude? To be treated with utmost tender loving care? Not in this culture.
Obviously there is a time-worn pejorative thing going on with this word, associated with servitude, oppression and very real hatred. The casual phrase ("that sucks") carries a subtext which, once I recognized it, altered the way I spoke, and have spoken ever since. It's a choice I made for myself. You should talk however you please. But it might be better for all of us if we considered the impact of even our most nonchalant verbal habits. Words are power.
Lindsay says: Words evoke habitual response belief patterns in people - extremely powerful. Words are vessels which carry with them the emotions of the heart of the speaker. The language to symbolize what has happened, what's happening now, what stands to happen. Thought forms become real; naming is essential to formation.
Starhawk says: Language also conveys metaphors; these metaphors, the images we use, shape our thoughts and our actions. The thought-forms of estrangement become bound into our language as metaphors, and the metaphors reinforce the thought-forms, the constricting patterns in our minds.
So where has the language been, and what do we invoke with the voice? One of my favorite words to sputter is bastard. What a great invective! Multi-purpose, like all good cusses. Lindsay quietly reminds me that the entire basis for that word is to be found in the history of patriarchal control of the bloodline. A bastard is iIlegitimate. Unsanctified by the laws and constricts of patrilineal descent. Out Of Wedlock - this conjures the icon of the chastity belt!
I still use the word bastard. Especially if somebody rips me off, or cuts me off in rush hour traffic. But the good thing is, I think about it when it comes out my mouth. And that I feel is a good habit. Having spent much of my life embroiled in all manner of habits, it's good to have one which I am sure is likely to do some good out here in Babylon. Like Che Guevara and John Coltrane, I would strive to continue to be guided by great feelings of love. Marianne Moore will finish the epistle:
Q: What is inward beauty?
A: Inward beauty affords you contentment. Compensates you for miserable things you see and read about, the happenings and unnecessary mistakes in life that worry you. Good will and concern for the other person; inward beauty - it contradicts bad behavior and ill will.