The Romance of Language, or, Slide Your Finger Between the Petals

It almost, almost, feels like Christmas.

This morning I woke up so excited. There is an event that combines the three languages I have been playing with and learning in a way, or in a capacity rather, that I have never experienced. It got me thinking about the parallels of what I love about language and what I love about and need from the people in my life and the people who I date.

Put succinctly?

Language has rules and consistency without being inflexible or strict.

Think about it.

In relation to language:

One wouldn't be able to say dog when canned difficult soaping the and expect anyone to make anything out of it. It doesn't follow the rules of the language. The English-speaking mind can't make sense of it because it falls outside of the agreed upon expectation.

Yet at the same time, language is incredibly and gloriously playful within its rules.

(pause)

Suppose I asked you if tongues dance.

You might go to the dictionary, read definitions of tongues and see a bit of variation - the thing in your mouth you taste with, the part of your shoe that is underneath the shoelaces, a word used to describe languages, etc - but there would certainly not be any indication that any of these could disembody and go dancing.

And yet:

My tongue dances up the side of your neck, and you turn your face deeper into the pillow that rests upon your bed in your newly reconfigured bedroom.

My tongue dances.

Even in structure and placement it can press a different feeling.  The difference between:

I don't need anyone but you. 

and

I don't need 

anyone 

but 

you.


In ASL, I think of the way language play and flexibility can create a visceral response in its visual form.  I think, here, of how one way to refer to the sharpness of "Deaf eyes" (the sign for DEAF signed over one's eyeball) immediately makes me giggle, and of how the sign for one way to express "colonization" (a simulated and simultaneous ripping out of one's heart and mind from a power above) leaves me gutted.

I think about this playfulness in language often, and how it comes with practice and time.

I'm sure everyone has heard the idea that one knows when they reach a particular level in a language when they are able to understand and produce humor within it. For me, however, it is more the play that shows that.

It is similar to relationships and friendships.  One knows they have reached a particular level in a relationship to another when they are able to understand and produce humor within it.  But more so, it is the ability to have and play within limits. Within rules.  To improvise. Be flexible. Riff off of each other. To become more than just yourself by virtue of and conjunction with, another.

Both with language and relationships there has to be rules and consistency.

But the finesse comes with following - and sometimes intentionally breaking - these rules and limits while enjoying and playing within them. 

A bit of an aside: "Grammar Nazis" have nothing on me.  They lack this flexibility. The second someone starts making fun of someone's grammar, I just think to myself, "Damn. These people have no fucking clue about the art and intelligence and perspectives that exist outside of their boring and elitist rules."  Because when you do that shit, you miss out on all kinds of poetry: From Neruda to Cardi B's Instagram account posts. They are on par with each other. Don't hand me elitism. Beauty is as much in the glitter of sun on water as it is in the glitter of the moon on spilled car oil on blacktop. Designer perfume and the stench of fucking have equal merits in what excites me: I'm here for all of it.

Wisdom and lesson doesn't come in the form you always want it to.  And sometimes? It can make you nervous at first.

But that, too, comes with time.

As with any language:

Stick with it.

It will come.

(pause)

Have the limits and have the rules

but have the openness

to play

and play

and play.

It's incredible what you will find.

Underneath and

between

the rules

there is release

there is consistency

and there is love.




[Here is to 'love letters' as things written on paper and put into envelopes
but also
here is to 'love letters' that are those who allow love to happen.]


Be well; be loved,

k.


Playing with language to learn. This is a clip of a geography teacher who re-wrote Bodak Yellow to help teach her students geography. Fuck YES. Love. : here

(image credit : Silent Beauties, photography by Leendert Blok (1920’s) via blackbirdspots tumblr)

Sugar Coated Assholes (Literal; Figurative)

I've just completed reading Cross Examinations of the Oscar Wilde Trials: A Comparison, which consists of what it sounds like: Transcripts of the cross examinations in the three trials involving Oscar Wilde. (What can I say, here? I'm a history-fascinated pansy with access to the materials of a legal library.) Of course we know that Wilde was famous for being well spoken and witty, but it is incredible to read how articulate he managed to be in the courtroom, under the rapid fire queer-outing interrogation of Mr. Edward Carson.

Although I knew that they had brought in some of the pieces he had written, I never realized how heavily his art was used as an attempt to create a case against him.  There's an entire section of the cross examination of the first trial that focuses strictly on Wilde's writing, and they go through everything: novels, plays, letters... entire segments and even single phrases are interrogated.

Mr. Carson reads heavily from The Picture of Dorian Gray,  but one of my favorite moments of classy smartass-ness (aka resistance) is in relation to a letter that Wilde wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas (aka "Bosie", the most infamous of Wilde's boys).  Mr. Carson is reading excerpts of the letter in order to imply to the members of the courtroom that Wilde's relationship with Bosie was "indecent":

Carson:  "Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry."... Is that a beautiful phrase?

Wilde: Not as you read it, Mr. Carson. You read it very badly.



While answering questions about supposed rent boys (Oh, to be a rent boy once again...) and rumors of stained hotel sheets, and while in the midst of a sturdy, glorious rain of cigarette cases, Oscar still manages to even achieve cross examination fashion cattiness (Here he is being questioned about a particular lad):

C. Were you fond of this boy?
W. Naturally.  He had been my companion for six weeks.
C. Did you take the lad to Brighton?
W. Yes.
C. And provided him with a suit of blue serge?
W. Yes.
C. And a straw hat with a band of red and blue?
W. That, I think, was his unfortunate selection.
C. But you paid for it?
W. Yes.



There is nothing in the world like a fashion-catty daddy.


(pause)


Ah, Oscar...


You may be many things, but you are far from tragic.


Each time I plume my back pocket with a flowering handkerchief
and each time I slide that last bit of notch to my Windsor knot



I will think of you.


That bit of wrist that is exposed
between
the end of a glove
and the beginning of one's sleeve



I will think of you.








k.

(photo credit: Lydia Roberts on Flickr)