Articulation Disintegration

Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, Tormenta Solar, 2023, oil on hemp. Speaking at the Rubell Museum on January 27.

Among the multitude of modalities through which power can be wielded, for both good and bad, the one that I feel most fascinated with remains that of language. Words, for me, represent an opportunity, maybe the only opportunity in a patriarchal society, to assert myself and my presence. I will never be the strongest or the richest, or even the most articulate, but any amount of articulation is better than none and gives me a fighting chance.

When I was younger, being able to explain myself clearly was my only method of defense to the myriad of issues that one gets themself into as a child. If I could only give my “why”, then maybe my parents, my teachers, my coaches would understand me, would lessen whatever punishment or life lesson lecture awaited me. Words, the right words, were magical tools that if sharpened and polished, could lead to my freedom.

As I grew older, of course this trait turned into being called a smart-ass by my family members. It’s true, no one loves the obnoxious pedant! Nonetheless, my love for language only continued to grow throughout school where every new book provided a vehicle for new words to add to my arsenal.

I should clarify that I wasn’t only viewing words as weapons, I rather saw them as tools that could be harnessed to not only explain my thought processes but to also experience the world in new and beautiful ways. In high school, I became fascinated with the fact that many languages have words for concepts and ideas that do not exist in others. How many things were I not to privy to, simply because I hadn’t been exposed to them in the languages that I was familiar with?

This concept of linguistic relativity is more familiarly known as the Sapir-Worth hypothesis. The controversial hard hypothesis that language determines thought has been dropped in favor of the weaker hypothesis that language influences thought. My favorite way to understand this topic is to explain the concept of “Yakamoz” in Turkish. It simply means “the reflection of the sun or the moon upon the water”. While we don’t have a direct one-word translation for this in English, it is still a concept that we can understand and are familiar with once explained. This is not what troubles me. What troubles me is what I may be missing out on and less tuned into because of the lack of these words in my lexicon. What beauties elude me? What terrors do I not comprehend? What words do I not have to better understand myself and others?

In the past two years since graduating college, I’ve been faced with the terrifying reality that is the atrophy of my language skills. This is not a new post-grad realization, but rather an issue that has simply been escalated by my new lack of formal education. Atrophy that, despite reading some 19th century literature or non-fiction books, simply cannot compete with the lack of critical discussions or close reading happening in my quotidian life. Try though I might, and I definitely could be trying harder, I am not immune to the brain rot that screens and social media cause.

Loss of language is akin to the shuttering of windows - each closure represents something no longer available to me. Things grow darker and darker, the world less accessible, a self-made prison of simplicity. A whole world, gone.

I find myself more and more appalled with my writing. Its lack of diverse sentence structures, the focus on “me, me, me”, the feeling of writing in circles rather than moving an idea forward at a digestible and rhythmic pace. To hopefully mitigate this apparent freefall towards mental vacuity, I’m finding myself more closely reading the Substacks that I follow and starting “Coventry”, the book of essays by the master of language and analysis herself, Rachel Cusk.

Some of the Subtacks that I stumble upon feel more informal than I would like my blog to be, but this could just be arrogance speaking. Sure, they’re posting shorter entries and less ‘fleshed out” ideas but at least they’re posting their writing! At least they’re being brave - incredibly so, because posting your writing requires public bravery and welcomes criticism from unknowing minds.

People who write, either as a hobby or for their job, are familiar with the desire for each new piece to be better than the last. (Or maybe I am projecting my perfectionist tendencies, which is a high possibility, but I swear I have seen this sentiment echoed many times!) When you couple this unrealistic desire with my fear towards my loss of language, what you get is nothing. Yes, nothing. Just frozen stupidity. No words spoken, no words written, no words posted, no world explored.

I have no grand realization to finish with, just the constant reminder that good things, things that are worth it, will take time and effort. Rage against the mental decay, if you will, towards new forms of beauty and understanding. Until next time, it’s just me and notes app list of new words against the world. Here’s some good ones: temerity, cerise, inveigle.