Words failed

Words failed

EVA HE, BA SCULPTURE, UAL.

Words, here I mean the fundamental element of language, of which the purpose is to communicate.

Of course, words are successful in constructing a society, such as being used in official documents or transcripts. Words are also efficient for individuals to learn the functionality and the moral norms of the world. Words reflects norms, norms that are supposed to provide a common sense that is from a total objective point of view. Words are supposed to be accurate, they are pins on concepts. They provide efficiency in communication.

Then, Why failure?

Words failed by distorting and diminishing the information we, as individual consciousnesses, take in. Words created an illusion of how the outside world is constructed:

1. Nouns give the units of things. Those with no names do not exist. Being used in social/ethical life, words impose ideology. If there’s no word for what you are or what you are doing, then your identity is effaced and what you are doing is meaningless.

2. Developed from the previous idea, the right that is given to a certain group to legitimize the meaning of words consolidates the society strata. Words after all are exclusive. Words are the substantiation of individuals compromising with the rest of people as a whole. For every one of us, to use language is to confront the otherness of being.

But, I am still using words writing this article. I do not think that there exists a better method to communicate more accurately... Thus I have to make it clear that, those failures I mentioned above come hand in hand with the success in constructing the existence of OUR “solid” culture/ history/ social structure. (Solidness only comes after the simplification and subtraction done by the language of words.) For the norms we have in mind, In the sake of those success of the whole species, individual sentimental lost of meanings are trivial.

Are they trivial, though, those idiosyncratic sections of living? Those sections of living that have been brutally marginalized for the values imposed on each one of us by society?

I can only speak for myself that, with language, the expression of mixed feelings that comes for no rational reasons (ex. melancholy) are not encouraged, and seldom do we dare to bring up anything that does not have a word for it.

This unspoken/ unwritten section of living cannot be deliberately put in to words. But they still strike the very inside of us sometimes when we see a painting/ sculpture or finish reading a story loaded by millions of words. That section of life only shows itself in art.

Those idiosyncratic section of living, from my understanding, are the very proof of one’s humanity. That is what makes us human, not a gear helping the world function, not a machine producing and consuming, not an animal mating and reproducing. Those feelings are precious for they haven’t been sifted by the concept units of language. They are untouched by the society norms for they have been ignored. For me, they are the magic of life, they are the remains of the soul that have been breathed into our physical body.

When I speak of the failure of words, I only mean the failure of its functionality; giving definition and logic, fails to outline the humanity (or to say, the soul, the illogical). For language premised that the world is objective and everything happens for a reason which counters the very nature of our (my) being.

I can give no further suggestion and I have no intention to call for people to cease using language. This piece of writing is only a reminder for myself to stop abandoning the mental experiences that do not fit in words. I need to stop forcing myself to talk and think in a way that is not at ease. I don’t have to express in words and words only. Words are not the more authentic way of expression. I’d better keep that in mind that words are man-made. I am more than a repeater of ideas within this society.