Indian says, nothing at all
Jan. 19th, 2017 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
afuchsSome time ago looking up unfamiliar words in a dictionary seemed to me much like reading a woman's resume before sleeping with her—unnecessary, unworthy. I was in the habit of convincing myself I already knew the word, any word. This kind of knowing requires a series of twisted epistemic thrusts, and does still impress me as being more visceral. Says Morrison, "Her cunt gripped him like a warm friendly hand." This describes a way of knowing words. He also says on another matter, "The sea is a vagina which can be penetrated at any point." The connection is obscure but this is an ostensibly linguistic comment. There is no other way to "know" words, and no need to "defamiliarize" them if they can be recognized as being of art, which does not disembed them, but preserves the aura. In fact, words do not even have a singular form. "Looking up" is nonsense. The German language, for instance, pretends to have two different plurals for "words." This is just false reasoning. "Poetry makes nothing happen," says W.H.Auden in an abusively famous fashion. He is sly, and he embeds this adage in a dead person's aura; what happens here is that the subject is extracted and alienated: the invasive dead "you" of the encompassing words of the poem. What poetry makes is make you make it art. Otherwise it enlivens its words the way a bra ad on a billboard enlivens a vacant lot.
Words are used in language which instantiates communication, but they are not of language. Art communicates the renouncement of communication by words, with words. Word art is primary, for it restores and strips away. Verbal creation is compelling and constantly baffling; the way of the matrix is renounced, words fall like letters into a boiling magnet.
This becoming rather shallow, let me return to the matter of the dictionary. By all means, do read the dictionary; do not read it for a word, entire of itself. Read it as you would desire one who is alone. This shall elevate your desire, not alleviate it by giving you the emptiness of knowledge.
Words are used in language which instantiates communication, but they are not of language. Art communicates the renouncement of communication by words, with words. Word art is primary, for it restores and strips away. Verbal creation is compelling and constantly baffling; the way of the matrix is renounced, words fall like letters into a boiling magnet.
This becoming rather shallow, let me return to the matter of the dictionary. By all means, do read the dictionary; do not read it for a word, entire of itself. Read it as you would desire one who is alone. This shall elevate your desire, not alleviate it by giving you the emptiness of knowledge.
