Category: Thinking

I love lan­guage because it is a code; because it is so mal­leable. I love watch­ing young peo­ple pick it up and turn it into their own code. My Clas­si­cal Greek pro­fes­sor once said that babes and chil­dren cre­ate and change lan­guage more than adults. I sup­pose this is because chil­dren are still being indoc­tri­nat­ed, don’t know all the rules, make their own. His exam­ple was caca, a baby word for shit. Once chil­dren becomes expert enough work­ing with­in the lan­guage, I sup­pose they start work­ing with­in the code, chang­ing its periph­ery instead of its nexus.

Where I am now, as a rel­a­tive adult, I can love lan­guage because with­in this code oth­ers can be cre­at­ed, cod­i­fied, destroyed, rein­vent­ed. Sim­i­le and metaphor are per­haps the most basic of codes with­in The Code. Puns, rid­dles, dou­ble enten­dres — these are, per­haps, the sec­ond lev­el of spe­ci­a­tion? If I am in a con­ver­sa­tion with two peo­ple, I can speak one sen­tence that has vast­ly dif­fer­ent mean­ings to each per­son. Or, at least, I can do it if I am suf­fi­cient­ly skilled in cre­at­ing these codes.

This breaks down when a code is mis­in­ter­pret­ed [always a threat] or when a code is only under­stood by the per­son cre­at­ing it. Skill lev­el comes in when a code is cre­at­ed and dis­sem­i­nat­ed. The skill is teach­ing oth­ers how to read the code. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is an art, and Art is com­mu­ni­ca­tion. blah blah blah.

Poet­ry, paint­ing, sculp­ture, these are art forms that to a great extent have become estranged from gen­er­al soci­ety because their code is no longer acces­si­ble. Or, per­haps, it was not acces­si­ble for so long that most peo­ple lost inter­est in it. or maybe its just TV. yeah that sounds fine.