to deal with language is to witness the mutation of meaning. it is to slice into the organic mass of semantic experience and come away with a tissue sample shaped by the instrument which made the incision. its interpreter is endlessly dissecting, labelling and stitching up glistening innards, clumsily suturing serene philology with petulant dialectics. the marks on its flesh are epitaphs, footnotes of past and future. it is a pulsating, slithering, bristling thing, language. it will grow a hundred new heads for every severed neck, and they will be the heads of creatures hitherto unknown. it is a vigorous manifestation, formidable and fickle, a scarred signifier with a life of its own.
a sober confusion
point of thoroughfare
transverse / conjecture
This is part of RHYTHM, a section of The Learned Pig devoted to exploring rhythm as individual and collective, as poetic and biological, and the ways that rhythm dictates life. RHYTHM is conceived and edited by Rachel Goldblatt.
