Pray 4 My Friends (Steven Julien Remix) – dreamcastmore, Shungu, Steven Julien + Alamode – Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers

I constantly think of the Nietzsche quote, “Is language the full and adequate expression of all realities?” At minimum, once a week. (And straight OFF THE RIP * 2019 DaBaby reference, the answer is a resounding HELL NO!! But with all things regarding this blog, there’s some nuance to that no that I wish to explore in this space.)

I have always found a profound degree of satirical irony in the fact that, even though language is one of the most limited mediums of communication, it’s championed by society the most. Language is perceived as the most legitimate form of communication in Western culture. It’s highkey part of the reason I started this blog. The symbiotic relationship between linguistic precision and our ability to express our thoughts and feelings fully, adequately, and clearly through words constantly fuels my curiosity about the world. And yet, the fact still remains: you could know all of the words in the universe, in as many languages as satisfy your desire, but because words are not actuality (a description of a mountain isn’t a mountain), they will oftentimes fall short of interpreting or being an absolutely accurate conduit for our feelings and emotions.

I think of relationships and phenomena in which language, as a form of communication, is insufficient. I liken the dynamic to loving an animal. You and that animal have never had a conversation in a common language, but still, there is a bond, a love that is reciprocated without the need to speak. Rather, acts of affection, care, and consistency build that relationship. Or take the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” The glaring example is art: how different mediums help convey different emotions and elicit different feelings. The relationship between the artist and the medium can incontestably carry more clarity than words. Color, texture, tone, and composition can often communicate human feelings more succinctly and powerfully than words. Yet, despite these indisputable truths, society still regards words as the most capable and absolute means of communication. What could our world look like if we invested as much money and social capital into art as we do into language?

It’s almost as if we choose to suffer for our inherent, rigid allegiance to language. That relationship will always fascinate me, especially because it’s one I’m so inextricably tied to. This is a blog, for Christ’s sake! I think we will always choose language because of how mercilessly we crave the ease it brings to connection and understanding. Literature and poetry use language as a creative medium, while the vast majority of human communication is functional and structural. We all experience and interact with art and nature on a daily basis, yet we still choose to communicate mainly within the constraints of language.

Although I’ve only painted in rather broad strokes up until this point, this isn’t my dog whistle for linguistic anarchists or language-importance deniers. However, I hope we can uncontestably recognize that society invests far more of its language in practical survival, science, law, and daily coordination than in pure art. I can fathom the societal need to prioritize survival, predictability, and scalable cooperation over raw emotional expression. Society cannot run on open-ended expression (no matter how eutopic it sounds to me). The function of language in modern society is to serve as a precise, predictable tool for managing collective behavior. Society invests so much into language to eliminate ambiguity and prevent chaos because the primary goal of language is to create an effective, employable workforce, not an emotionally competent or expressive society… Which is such a damn shame, because I know so many grown adults who would benefit from being prompted to use their brains more artistically on a daily basis. 

But to reimagine what we know to be true would be to invest just as much into art as we do in language. It would mean shifting the perspective of daily communication from utility-driven to one that recognizes its profound aesthetic, emotional, and philosophical value. I’ve soft-launched this idea in some unwelcoming public circles, and their contested opinions echo the fear of losing the “advancement” we, as a society, have made if we broaden our focus. And to that, I would say that art has an unmatched ability to express complex human experiences which, if expressed properly (to a high degree of accuracy and proficiency), only serve to enhance language, not deplete it.

Investing in that infrastructure could look like investing in creative literacy within schools, teaching children (who grow into the composition of society’s adults…) to express their inner worlds with as much fluidity as they write essays. It could mean having public funding to protect endangered languages and dialects, viewing language as the irreplaceable, living architect of human thought that it is. It could mean heightening linguistic architecture in public parks, squares, transit, etc., treating these spaces with as much civic pride as we do art museums.

Not only do I believe society would see an undeniable collective ROI, but history has proven my hunch correct. In many West African empires, such as Mali, Songhai, and Ghana, art and language were never viewed as separate entities. Society invested in material art with the same functional, legal, and structural weight that it gave to the spoken word. Textile communication within these communities was of the utmost importance. Empires poured immense economic resources into training master weavers because textiles functioned exactly like state documents. Each color, thread count, and repeating pattern communicated a proverb, historical event, or legal status.

During the Heian period in Japan (794–1185), poetry entirely replaced standard social speech among the aristocracy of the Japanese imperial court. One’s social standing, hiring capability, and political advancement were directly correlated with their penmanship, choice of stationery, and ability to improvise a nuanced poem in response to a colleague or rival. In their culture, communicating bluntly was seen as vulgar and a sign of poor character.

In Native American cultures, petroglyphs (carvings) and pictographs (paintings), although lacking a structured grammar, convey sounds. The carved images worked alongside spoken oral histories. Notably, there is a close link between rock carvings and traditional Indian Sign Language, which, together with national and regional sign language dialects, gave rise to American Sign Language. Indian Sign Language used both physical gestures and shared visual signs to bridge different spoken tribal languages. Many tribes viewed these carvings as a direct form of communication. To illustrate, the Hopi word tutuveni means “rock carving” or “painting,” and the same word is used today to refer to books and newspapers.

I’m not suggesting that lawmakers start using hand-drawn pictures to interpret the law rather than language (even though my argument may sound that outlandish to some). Rather, I’m proposing that we infuse artistic expression and emphasis back into language, for it benefits society as a whole. There would be a public benefit in investing in the nuance of artistic language. To have the importance of utility rival poetic form isn’t some interpretive, romantic, idyllic goal. It’s, in fact, the way previous societies functioned (likely more successfully than we are right now, might I add) for thousands of years. Sometimes, the most radical form of innovation is remembering that humanity has already spent millennia figuring out how to live. All we gotta do is wake it (tf) up.