ocean vuong interview & language as body
I’m starting a habit of compiling my highlighted notes for everything I absorb — to slowly grow my inspiration library.
I listened to this on being interview with ocean vuong yesterday — and I loved the way he talked about language as its own spoken body — moving and breathing in space — and of course, the body as its own language.
to see language as its own body is to say:
(1) language is a living thing. language breathes. language dies. language lives in movement, in air, in change — across time and space. the air itself is a vessel for language, especially when it is spoken.
(2) language touches bodies without actual physcial touch. hence — violence and love are both communicated clearly through words. the wound of words actually harms the body. and the love of touch can communicate love without words.
this mirroring relationship between body & language — is truly very powerful. I wonder: how would I live my life differently, if I related to my body as language?
or related to language as if they were part of my body? how would I move? how would I write? speak? love?
highlighted
on using the voice as a way of entering into a relationship of care
“I want to make my words deliberate; I want to enter — I want to take off the shoes of my voice so that I can enter a place with care so that I can do the work that I need to do.”
13:30 | the body as its own language of love — words as parts of the body
“The body is the ultimate witness to love. And I learned that right away. We don’t say, “I love you.” If we do, we say it in English as a sort of goodbye…
And I think — because what happens is that through the body and through service, you articulate it through paying attention. Nothing can say “I love you” more than feeling it from somebody. And I think this relationship is how I started to see words. I looked at them as if they were things I could move and care for.”
17:30 | the future is in language
“We often tell our students, “The future’s in your hands.” But I think the future is actually in your mouth.”
You have to articulate the world you want to live in, first. We pride ourselves, as a country that’s very technologically advanced … but I think we’re still very primitive in the way we use language and speak, particularly in how we celebrate ourselves. “You’re killing it.”
31:00 | the second generation immigrant on wanting to be seen
”the first generation made it here, and to live at all is such a privilege that they’re happy, and even encourage you to put your head down, work, fade away, get your meals, and live a quiet life.
And I think the second generation, the great conundrum there, the great paradox, is that they want to be seen. They want to make something. And what a better way to make something and fill yourself with agency than to be an artist?
So: so many of us immigrant children end up betraying our parents in order to subversively achieve our parents’ dreams.”
37:00 | the embodied voice, the air as its own page
“I feel like the voice in the air is like a second page, the way you can articulate the pauses, the cadences.”
43:00 | the american lexicon & a fire escape of speaking truth
“What is the linguistic existence of a fire escape, that we can give ourselves permission to say, “Are you really OK?”
passageways
2020: the body remembers how to center
2020: bodies are just bodies
2019: the body as a compass
2017: at home in my body