Out Loud
“You think I’m talking just to hear myself talk?” –Bill Cosby.
Maybe I do like the sound of my own voice. I don’t know. I do know that I love language. All language. My language. I like the well-crafted sonnets of John Donne as much as I like the colorful metaphor and imagery put forth by the Manic Street Preachers. I find both to be evocative.
I must be weird. I like being alone. I like silence. I like space. These are not human norms. Preliterate, tribal societies don’t have the concept of personal space that we have. Life is a social thing, something that is spent, by default talking with and being near the same small group of people all the time. I dig my clique, don’t get me wrong. And I would go to great ends to see them happy and safe. I know, that would make me not weird.
Its more... I like to talk about ideas. Language is an idea. Language is a different idea for everyone. This is something that we do all day, everyday and I suppose in the space of our tribes, what we say, what we reference is common. You don’t have to bother to define it further, because you were all there when it happened and saw it happen and understand what is being described and what is meant. Guess you had to be there. Literacy changes that. Literacy creates language that spans time, place, class, and gender. It gives language the appearance of being stark, immutable and the status quo. Maybe its that I do a lot of identity theorizing. But written/oral, person/persona, image/content, these are distinctions I can make and do make. When I talk, I like talking about ideas. Feelings are for feeling and living is for living they don’t need to be discussed. I like to separate ideas out from emotions so that, like play-doh I can observe them, roll them over and manipulate them. I like to engage with them. Maybe that’s not weird.
I like saying, “ I learned this thing...” And I like getting excited about it and I like telling people about it. I like when this happens for other people. The classical world doesn’t interest me, except when I get to hear it filtered through the excitement and presentation of my friend Elizabeth. So, maybe this isn’t separating things from emotion... maybe its just separating them from things that aren’t love. My point is, she’s not telling me about what’s going on in her life or what people were wearing, she’s connecting with the past and something beyond the immediate, getting excited about it and sharing it. I like that. I like that a lot.
--August 2005
