A NEW KIND OF LANGUAGE
OCTOBER 16, 2010. No matter how interesting or unusual we may find the language of some remote group living at the end of the world—and I’m not discounting the import of such a language—I’m suggesting something different:
A kind of language that constantly changes meaning and yet has distinct and powerful impact in each momentary incarnation.
At first glance, the idea may seem absurd.
But what happens when you look at a painting by Willem de Kooning or Hieronymus Bosch? Is there merely one stable and lasting impression? Of course not. Are these paintings precisely defined scientific statements? Of course not.
In fact, think of a place you love to visit. Do you return, over and over again, because you experience EXACTLY the same feeling each time?
How about weather? Would you say that, because weather is a constantly shifting thing, it is meaningless and can’t be grasped?
Do your friends evoke carbon copies of themselves every time you see them?
Therefore, why not consider the possibility of language that constantly shifts meaning, as a fundamental aspect of its nature?
Such a subjective language would have a far-reaching effect. In fact, I’m suggesting that it would shake apart many notions, ideas, convictions, and premises that limit our experience of so-called reality.
And if THAT happened, who knows what might follow?
We all have “pillars” of thought and conviction about reality that remain stable over time. Our language reflects and enforces the solidity and durability of these foundations. Now, we take off with a new kind of language that engages a far different aspect of our imagination. In the process, the pillars begin to crumble. We’re no longer living in precisely the same structure. We can see beyond it. We discover there are infinities beyond it. And the key to that discovery lies in the use of language that allows us to impart new and changing meanings of an entirely subjective nature.
Subjective impressions and meanings never went far enough. We dipped into them here and there, but we restricted their range. We were locked into the formal structure of our language to such a degree that we never imagined we had such a vast field of invention at our disposal. It simply never occurred to us. We were blinded by the shape and syntax of our language.
We assume that the reality that lies in front of our eyes, that challenges us every day, is so problematical that we need all our troops to carve out an area of success for ourselves—and the very last thing we’re going to do is sacrifice those soldiers, the soldiers of our present language. However, it turns out that if we can temporarily set them off to the side and bring on a whole new set of meanings from the depth of imagination, we speak a new language that changes everything—for the better.
What a strange notion. But what if it’s true? And is it any stranger than the thousands of stories that purport to assure us that some vast external intervention is going to save us? Perhaps those stories are a piece of a larger mosaic, and the missing pieces are the ones that we ourselves would supply, if we could find a medium (a language) that would permit us, finally, to express what we really want to say—with all its shifting and changing emotions and energies and poetics.
JON RAPPOPORT