At a wake, Goodbye to Language
“People of the world, join hands! We’ve got a love train, a love train.”
The O’Jays
What is the difference
between an idea and a metaphor?
What can we conceive that
is not transformed
through ourselves, our tongues,
those tools to decode experience?
All we have is language and
language gives rise to ideology.
Language makes a semiotic slave
of babe and mother alike.
Speech violates freedom, for
when I speak: subject.
When I hear: object.
Soon everyone will need an interpreter
to understand the sounds
coming out of their own mouths.
So join hands! How
you will know if your life was well
lived is if your funeral
looks like this one.
If your death attracts so much love
as this, where death and love
squat proudly at home
in the heart of Hollingdean.
And we carouse them and raise a glass,
our young girls dance.
Put away future, put away past
to dance in a circle in the
community centre. People of the world!
Join hands, join hands.
This morning is a dream.
Each person must imagine the other
is the dreamer. Those
lacking imagination take
refuge in reality. Only humans
envisage infinity as a line
of zeros along the sea, and that’s
what we have in common.
Goodbye to Language (in the title) refers to the Godard film and several lines are taken/adapted from there. "A line of zeros along the sea" refers to a vision a mathematician had (David Hilbert) in which he "saw" the solution to the problem he was working on.
Posted Oct 10, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC · edited
-we must simply accept we are all; in a dreamworld and under
-stand when power is attached to a word; such as [death & love] or [funeral
-& life] therein these arguments are identical in such a way that thus;
-one can truly begin to understand the difference between a-
-metaphor and an idea, thus; one is an item you can pass on,
-therein the other is something; that attaches intrinsically the feels;
-Love we can pass on therein we can celebrate the lives we can help
-while death may be frightening, that moment; you remember someone they are liv-
-ing therein you for just a moment, thus; celebrate their lives;
-the funeral will cement wherein people remember someone, thus;
-remember someone well, or don't, thus; celebrate the victorious dead!
Cryptic!
-it's just dacyllic hexameter; places that must be read thoroughly
-to understand, thus? you only make use of so many metric dactys,
-these authors do not choose to write forthwith choice but necessity, in where-
-forth then what? hence-with, I will addendum my tantalizations through-forth!
-thereinthroughoutforthwiththuswencehence= necessary words lost to the tomes.
-A follower. Wonderful, thus whereto; there-through next, decide the path of
&ndsp;
yonder;
Hey man. Thanks for giving feedback, but it would help the author more if you were clearer and more direct. If you were to post a poem linking this comment I would not consider it substantial feedback.
nailed it with a hammer.