Thursday, February 7, 2008

Liquid words

I love the title of this chapter; "liquid words", it brings up all sorts of connotations and visualizations. For instance, I have, in the past, when bogged down with words not flowing or forgetting what I was saying mid sentence, grabbed my tongue, pulled some spit off it, and then offer it to whom I was speaking. The result is usually laughter. In such an instance how important were the words?
To me the examples being given, for instance Jackson Pollock, seem to defy the laws/ rules by which we might interpret something, when this happens it seems to me the brain must find a new channel or pathway by which to describe what its seeing. Disturbance or disruption which systematically forces the brain to assimilate and try to place the bits into familiar channels at first, then hopefully, a new way of interpreting will begin to emerge.
In the chapter, "liquid words", we are again confronted with the idea that a dichotomy exists in all things, for instance, [Ruscha's] Liquid Words, as the little pieces of food that settle in the puddles indicate, are vomited words-reminding us that, like so many other parts of the human body, the mouth has a double function (in Documents Michel Leiris noted that this organ of eloquence, "the visible sign of intelligence," also serves to spit; the same "base materialism" animates Ruscha's work).
The point of the erosive nature of language is also significant as well as the "inevitable and irreversible nature of this process." Nothing is stagnant, nothing really remains the same, nothing. Even though we have a feeling of firmness on the planet we are moving at an enormous pace - that which brings gravity - it is this that leads me to another dichotomy: the movement of our planet is what allows us to find stillness, but is that really possible? Or is there an illusion at play? "There cannot be liquid words (we only speak of a flow of language and of liquid consonants metaphorically), " but the sameness or concreteness of language does not exist either. for even in a copy of text, one reader will not be in the same place at the same point in time. Then why is it so difficult to invent something new?! I believe these processes we're going through are attempting to move us in that direction.

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