Drzava

I am intending a meeting with a group of local writers tomorrow evening. I've never done anything like this, it will be my first meeting, and I am intrigued by it. The assignment, which I got when I sent an email asking for info, was to look at a piece of art and write something that it inspires us to. I chose Lichtenstein's Varoom, and here is what I came up with, what do ya'll think?


Varoom. Varoom epitomizes dependence. The onomatopoeia is a euphemism for the relations between people, the utter dependence of 'V' and 'R' upon 'A' and 'O' upon 'O', identical in nature tied together by 'M'. English is a dependent language as are the people that speak it a dependent type, for in society one must upturn every stone in search of a sky, fry, or a cry, and still 'Y' is present. One must go further and cross a cwm to find a cwm, and yet 'W' is still present. For as independent and entrepreneurial as Americans are, our method of communication is still reliant upon vowels, and when an exception arises, a new rule is made to create a vowel. If new rules were not made, how could we explain the word 'rhythm', which breaks the vowel rhythm. There are no words that are entirely consonants much as no man is an island, and in all of Shakespeare's vocabulary they were still tied together with vowels. A word without vowels is a facade, and even the obscure Polish, with words like płynny still have a 'Y'. Indeed, the languages we speak do say a great deal about who we are, but it is almost impossible to escape the fact that no matter how different one word is from another, they all have something in common. Off the top of my head, still thinking in Polish, the single word I can think of that defies these rules is tiny in length but still plays an important role. Perhaps all people are the same in some aspect, but nevertheless, I still wish to be Slavic. Utterly alone and without neighbors, I want to be the word z.

zaoshang

Your text seems good for the meeting -- I'm sure it will lead to interesting discussions.

I was always intrigued by the question if the phonetics of a language had anything to do with the spirit of the people who speak that language natively. It's obvious indeed that English, unlike Slavic languages, rejects strong accumulations of consonants. As I know, the "Sapir-Worf hypothesis" (the language we speak shapes up the world we live in) doesn't refer to phonetics. So do you think there is any relation between the vowel-oriented character of the English language and the general psychology/behaviour/social life in English-speaking countries?

Drzava

Interesting take, not precisely what I had in mind, but I wanted it to be open. I was working towards like, no matter how different some people try to be, they really aren't that different at all. I think down to his core, even Emerson or Thoreau was just as big of a conformist as either of us. Words, like people, conform. Of course there are words like nth in English that don't, and I'm sure there are other languages that have consonants that suffice as words, but it's not so pleasant to ruin it by thinking like that

Japanese is extremely vowel oriented by comparison, with letters broken into syllables, so instead of 'k' theere is ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. Of course Japan is well noted for conformist culture.


The meeting was bad. I was the only sub-40 there, I felt so terribly out of place. Bah.