Tuesday, February 25, 2003

on...Your mouth getting washed out with soap

Below Marek's response to Tom's Post concerning language. This nugget popped out:

We need translators. Those shamans of old who speak both the language of the tribe and the language of the gods. We need translators who can live in one language and then shift and live in another. We need language travelers. Language shifters. The world is much richer than the best constructions of English language can ever reveal.

That whole "boy goes away from the village to big city and comes back and village now sucks" thingy comes to mind. Not the message of Marek , yet I wonder. I wonder about this whole thing of change. I have friends who are damn set on keeping their "language" pure. Their God. Their jobs. Their microwave dinners. Don't change things comes the reply when bringing up different languages.

Some of us embrace change/new languages like a needle full of good stuff. We dig. It is our juice. Almost. Don't be raving against our machine though. I suspect many of us that do this danged journal thing are such folk. Where is my f'n point....

How do you inspire people to change? Don't gimme those damned answers that consultants give CEO's. How do you speak to people in their language while bringing them into awareness of something new? Something other. Holy? How do WE get THEM to see it. Shit. That is it.

We already have to much we and them. That guts language (at first). Starts wars. Makes you different than me. You are not. Not in that place where we all run and hide. The place where no one sees. That is the gene they need to find.

I want to throw on a Russian skin and speak the language of Ruskis. Gimme. Yet, I don't know how NOT to be different.

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