Language As Property

Language As Property

Today's world is a world in hybridization. We have extended the left side of our brains into a huge mass of telecommunications. The main problem is that we have extended only one side of our double sided brain -- the logical and sequential side. If life were only logical and sequential, we would solve many of the great riddles very quickly. However, the logical, sequential process that we have so very carefully loaded into our computers is, unfortunately, only a visual modality. Marshall McCluhan in several of his books uses the phrase "to the blind man all things are sudden." This throws a very different perspective into the measurable, visual realm. Sound is a thing that cannot be measured accurately. (This accounts for the many dismal failures of new concert halls) What we cannot measure with decided accuracy, we tend to call "art:" i.e., the art of healing is a decent example. Our languages for the most part tend to describe and measure (or name and measure). There are those who believe language to be the "original" property, in the sense of real estate. Certainly, we adhere to that concept when we grant a copyright license to an author. Perhaps words can be invested with magic, as McCluhan points out. In pre-literate societies, magical words can be used to curse or elevate, heal or cause sickness, etc. We are dealing with the pen and the sword... but the sword is verbal. "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me;" the protective power mantra of the child who has been struck by the tip of a verbal sword is only a cloak. The sword pierces the cloak more often than not. Words stick! Sometimes like glue. Sometimes for years. Words are power and power is real. Wielding the power is not necessarily a logical and sequential sport. Communication with words is not necessarily logical and sequential either. In oral cultures such as portions of our Afro-American population, word-magic still not only exists; it has surfaced and become a part of our mainstream culture in the form of rap. Rhyming in the Afro-American population has been a game of wits for as long as English was the language spoken. I would venture to say that if someone were to investigate, we would find rhyming games in many West African cultures. A good rhymer is a person who gets respect for his or her quick wit and intelligence. Words and/or word order in oral culture get "made up" on the spot. A person who originates a word or phrase becomes "somebody," not only in oral culture, but in literate culture as well. We are inundated with commercial messages in both print and over the airwaves. Many people know phrases such as "I am the greatest" or "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." In a mass media world such as we live in today, being known can make a person wealthy. This is the power of the name itself - real property. During the sixties, the popularization of hallucinogens created a new investigation of "worlds without end." New sets of parameters had to be invented as people turned on and tuned out. Infinity got a new definition (quantum physics didn't hurt anything either); established dimensions and measurements became too rigid for our imaginations. Our ideas leaked out through the spaces between the letters we had so carefully memorized and touched a different space in our heads. There was nothing new about this - except that we were living in an electronic world where everyone was becoming instantly aware of what was happening - not next door or in the next state, but all over the globe. What the "mystics" had learned over the centuries became immediate pop culture - mysticism available to all either through the Maharishi or Dr. Timothy Leary. (Interesting to note that Dr. Leary's cohort in the LSD days has become Baba Ram Dass). Electronics gives it to you right away. You are in it - now! You don't have to wait for the sun; you don't have to wait to find a match; you don't have to find the gas jet - you turn on the light - now. Immediate sunlight. Immediate gratification. No time wasted. Being a mystic requires huge expenditures of time. It requires long dialogues and explorations that take months or years to complete. It requires a discipline, and ironically, the discipline is often a series of logical and sequential steps taken to eventually arrive at a destination. It is the destination that is veiled. Usually, individual study with a master of that discipline is a necessity, because things are always hidden from our senses. Electronic speeds have allowed us to "view" many things that till now had taken a student years to "find" or "get." For instance, when you say a vowel, you are really "saying" a musical chord. Tibetan monks, in order to keep their holy texts a mystery, developed a technique of harmonic singing which separates the harmonic overtones of the vowels, creating two specific pitches that can be audibly heard. The actual words become "masked" and thus difficult to understand. The Mongolians also developed a method of harmonic singing in which sung pitches and harmonic pitches can be played in counterpoint with each other. These techniques are thousands of years old. The composer Stockhausen made a trip to Tibet in the early 1950s and heard these monks singing. He was able by harmonic analysis with electronic instruments to break the vowels into their component parts and teach a group of singers to sing the "phonetics" in a startling 72 minute piece of music called "Stimmung" that has several meanings, the primary of which is "tuning." Remarkably, none of these techniques is new. There are organs in Spain built in the 1400s that also duplicate the sound of human vowels with startling clarity. This requires a knowledge of "hidden" secrets that the mystics have passed on to each other for many thousands of years. Electricity immediately makes these secrets available to all. Electricity also causes us to believe that we can have things right away. Unfortunately, we who are locked in bodies are limited by certain sets of dilemmas. The person receiving Morse Code cannot receive any more than seven separate dots and dashes per second. Period! Cannot be done! Why? Because anymore than seven "sound events" per second, and our ears convert the events into a single pitch. That is a limitation of perception. Most of us cannot hear above 20,000 cycles per second (abbreviated 20kHz) That doesn't mean it isn't there; just ask your dog. Our languages severely limit our ability to perceive and experience unusual or different phenomena. Our mainstream English language is one of name and measure. McCluhan points to James Joyce as a liberator of language fetters - especially Finnegan's Wake - a play on words from the title to the final sentence. Unlocking the secrets of the mystics requires long and tedious training in a world where time in measured by computers in picoseconds. Once again, we have a "wall" such as exists in Morse code. Perhaps the machines will teach us to use the new language we have invented -- until then, I'm not quite certain who is Deus and who is machina. That's all for now