creamygoodness

"English motherfucker, do you speak it?"

Language, it's a funny old thing, isn't it?

I mean sure, on one level you can take it for what it is, the framework we have created to take everything away from abstraction, even abstraction itself. The pin we use to trap the butterfly of an idea, pinning it down for us to display to passers-by. Paring an object or idea down to nouns and verbs and adjectives, cutting little slices off the world and laying them out in lines.

Look past that though, look past function and you see Language is its own animal. Hundreds of poets, writers and other assorted wordsmiths, making livings from hammering lumps of verbiage together, have tried to tell us this, but we never realise what they mean until we discover it for ourselves. We read the words, we piece together the construct, but we don't truly comprehend until we feel the snarl of a clipped rejoinder, or let a long, leisurely sentance wash over us like waves on a beach until we forget how the sentance even started.

Most of all, though, sooner or later you start to hear language's rhythm. It's the reason why it's so hard to speak a foreign language and sound like you belong. Even if you practise the accent until your throat hurts and pore over lists and lists of vocabulary. There's still that last step, settling into the rhythm of the language, chopping words short, choosing the right word for the situation, knowing why it's "Alright guv'nah?" and not "Alright governor?"

Eventually, you learn how to dance with her. Spinning off sentances into reels and jigs, playfully picking out alliteration and puns and other cheeky games spent pinching the cheeks of convention. I've wanted to dance with her since I was young, known that I could lead her in the occasional waltz, wanted to take her through some maddened tango of creation.

I've tried it too, I've written a dozen first chapters, and a hundred more in my head. I've teased out whole worlds of my own creation but I never seem to make it past the first verse of the song before I'm distracted and run off to the next shiny thing. I've pretty much put aside any ideas of earning my keep this way but I still can't stop hoping that one of these days I'll finish a dance with her. Just one will do...