The Grinding Sound of Human Language-Thought
I have a metaphor for you. For me, this goes back to my childhood, when I had a computer with a tape-cassette drive. I would put normal audio-cassettes into the drive (which looked just like a tape player), and type commands into the computer. The computer would then silently roll the tape and either record data to the tape, or transfer data from it into the computer’s memory.
One time I decided to play one of the data-bearing audio-cassettes on an audio tape player. As soon as I pressed play, an amusing but simultaneously distressingly unpleasant grinding, banging, bleeping sound came out of the speakers, as if an electronic kitchen full of pots and pans had just rolled down a hill. Years later, while using modems, I realized they made the same sound when connecting to the internet.
This to me, puts the contrast well; Original Language, the language of immersive body experiences, of dream reason (sometimes called metaphor), sounds to the rest of the community of life like an audio cassette (with music on it) in an audio player. The music it plays determines their reaction; predatory, aggressive music will have certain effects, soothing melodic music otherwise. But putting in the data-cassette will always produce the cacophony of assaultive machine sounds, however sublimely ordered and sensibly coded, causing other-than-humans to flatten their ears against their skulls unpleasantly.
Certainly a coyote howling will speak to a deer that a radically different mind prowls somewhere out there; humans need not feel guilty for speaking like humans to each other, however much it offends other animals. We only need think about this issue in two cases:
One, when we want to speak to other-than-humans.
Two, when human language, as we experience it, has wandered down roads so toxic, polluted, and domesticated, that we no longer know what it means to speak a truly human language.
I believe both of these cases have come to front and center now. Both of them require us to stand up and pay attention. Our continued participation in the living world demands it of us.
We must return to the Original Language, bring our waking selves to a fluency in it, so that we can rebirth our ability to speak sanely, as adults who live in a community of life. So that we can join the Rewilding Renaissance, a rebirthing of belonging and meaning.
Perhaps “meaning” really signifies “belonging”. Perhaps the modern narcissistic quest for “meaning” really indicates a quest for “belonging”. Well, we didn’t come from anywhere else, regardless of what civilized myths tell us. If we want to have a relationship of belonging to our Land (before we not only cease to belong, but cease to fit into whatever habitat remains), we must choose it.
As children of the Original Dreaming Land, we always belonged. As abused children of civilization, we have tested the bonds of family to the limit.
They haven’t broken.
Yet.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
How? I mean, how without appropriating from our brothers/uncles/sisters/aunts who have been here before? How when immersed in a culture of cacaphony, in a meaningful way that can influence my children?
Hm.
Must dream about this.
Best
Bill Maxwell
September 16th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I like how you “think”.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
I might point out that the night I posted this comment, I dreamed I was taken 51 levels underground, where all the answers lay, and as I was trying to look through them, guided by someone who was proud they kept the secrets there, a giant raccoon kept trying to hit me with a metal staff that would catapult me back to the year 1000.
My guide (a woman) apologized about the raccoon being a little unfriendly but did want me to try and understand its position, which I did. Didn’t make it any less difference to the fact I had to keep ducking those swipes!
Best
Bill Maxwell
September 19th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Um…TOTALLY COOL! What a fun dream.
I say, as a spectator, of course.
I hope you can get one of your people to give you a Dream Interview on that one!!
p.s. have you seen the movie Hellboy II: the Golden Army recently?
September 20th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Alas, I have no one down here that I know of that can give me a Dream Interview
And, double-alas (’cause one ain’t enough), I have yet to view Hellboy II
September 21st, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Did I put up enough info in podcasts and blogposts here that you think you can give it a try? Have you looked into Gayle Delaney’s book “All About Dreams”?
If I haven’t put enough info up, what else could I provide that would help you experiment with the Dream Interview? I sincerely want folks to feel they can give these things a try, and so any ideas you have for making the College of Mythic Cartography less of a spectator sport, I’d appreciate.
As far as the Dream, as long as you wrote it down, it can sleep until you have the resources to wake it up, methinks.
yrs,
W
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:49 am
Hi Bill, somewhat off topic I suppose, but I have to ask, Why the year 1000?
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
re: the year 1000, I’m really not sure! I’m not even sure if it’s 1000 BC or something more current. It’s just that year was clear as a bell; that was what he was going to knock me into. Hmph. Means I’ll have to look it up.
Best
Bill
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Now that’s interesting… took a moment to look it up.
Here’s the points important to me. 1000 BC was the end of the Bronze Age and the time when the Phoenician alphabet was put into wide use (ultimately becoming the Greek alphabet which helped lock human thought — see post above that reflects how grinding our language has become!). It’s also the point in part of my personal history, when the people of the North (I’m related to Norwegians & their folk) left the Danube to become the Latins (who I’m also related to).
On the flip side, 1000 AD is also pertinent. It’s the beginning of modern science, started by scholars in the Islamic world. On a personal note, it’s when one of my ancestors, Leif Ericson, set foot on the North American continent.
So, both relevant dates. Very interesting.
Best
Bill