{"id":20565,"date":"2018-09-14T06:39:38","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T10:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=20565"},"modified":"2018-09-14T06:39:38","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T10:39:38","slug":"what-you-thought-was-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/what-you-thought-was-said\/","title":{"rendered":"What You Thought Was Said"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image:<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Pass Me That Wrench,” by June Yarham; found on Flickr<\/a>, of course, and used here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!)]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (italicized lines):<\/p>\n

Sometimes a Voice (1)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes a voice—have you heard this?—<\/em>
\nwants not to be voice any longer, wants something<\/em>
\nwhispering between the words, some<\/em>
\nrumour of its former life. Sometimes, even<\/em>
\nin the midst of making sense or conversation, it will<\/em>
\nhearken back to breath, or even farther,<\/em>
\nto the wind, and recognize itself<\/em>
\nas troubled air, a flight path still<\/em>
\nlooking for its bird.<\/em>
\nI’m thinking of us up there<\/span>
\nshingling the boathouse roof. That job is all
\noff balance—squat, hammer, body skewed
\nagainst the incline, heft the bundle,
\ndaub the tar, squat. Talking,
\nas we have always talked, about not living
\npast the age of thirty with its
\nlabyrinthine perils: getting hooked,
\nsteady job, kids, business suit. Fuck that. The roof
\nsloped upward like a take-off ramp
\nwaiting for Evel Knievel, pointing into open sky. Beyond it
\ntwenty feet or so of concrete wharf before
\nthe blue-black water of the lake. Danny said
\nthat he could make it, easy. We said
\nnever. He said case of beer, put up
\nor shut up. We said
\nasshole. Frank said first he should go get our beer
\nbecause he wasn’t going to get it paralysed or dead.
\nEverybody got up, taking this excuse
\nto stretch and smoke and pace the roof
\nfrom eaves to peak, discussing gravity
\nand Steve McQueen, who never used a stunt man, Danny’s
\nlife expectancy, and whether that should be a case
\nof Export or O’Keefe’s. We knew what this was—
\nongoing argument to fray
\nthe tedium of work akin to filter vs. plain,
\nstick shift vs. automatic, condom vs.
\npulling out in time. We flicked our butts toward the lake
\nand got back to the job. And then, amid the squat,
\nhammer, heft, no one saw him go. Suddenly he
\nwasn’t there, just his boots
\nwith his hammer stuck inside one like a heavy-headed
\nflower. Back then it was bizarre that,
\nafter all that banter, he should be so silent,
\nso inward with it just to
\nrun off into sky. Later I thought,
\ncool. Still later I think it makes sense his voice should
\nsink back into breath and breath
\ndevote itself to taking in whatever air
\nmight have to say on that short flight between the roof
\nand the rest of his natural life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Don McKay [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

4. Minor Miracles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Taking the empty air
\nDeep in our lungs,
\nWarming it there,<\/p>\n

Extracting from it
\nWhat our blood needs,<\/p>\n

Then breathing it back
\nOut as sound
\nWe’ve added meaning to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Gregory Orr [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Sometimes a Voice (2)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes a voice—have you heard this?—
\nwants not to be voice any longer and this longing
\nis the worst of longings. Nothing
\nassuages. Not the curry-comb of conversation,
\nnot the dog-eared broken
\nsatisfaction of the blues. It huddles in the lungs
\nand won’t come out. Not for the Mendelssohn Choir
\nconstructing habitable spaces in the air, not for Yeats
\nintoning “Song of the Old Mother<\/a>” to an ancient
\nmicrophone. It curls up in its cave
\nand will not stir. Not for the gentle quack
\nof saxophone, not for the raven far-calling
\ncroak. Not for oh<\/em> the lift of poetry, or ah<\/em>
\nthe lover’s sigh, or um<\/em> the phrase’s lost
\nleft shoe. It tucks its nose beneath its brush
\nand won’t. If her whisper tries
\nto pollinate your name, if a stranger yells
\nhey kid, va t’en chez toi<\/span><\/em> to set another music
\ngoing in your head it simply
\nenters deafness. Nothing
\nassuages. Maybe it is singing
\nhigh in the cirque, burnishing itself
\nagainst the rockwall, maybe it is
\nclicking in the stones turned by the waves like faceless
\ndice. Have you heard this?—in the hush
\nof invisible feathers as they urge the dark,
\nstroking it toward articulation? Or the moment
\nwhen you know it’s over and the nothing which you
\nhave to say is falling all around you, lavishly,
\npouring its heart out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Don McKay [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

….and:<\/p>\n

Michel de Montaigne ascribed animals’ silence to man\u2019s own wilful arrogance. The \u00a0French essayist argued that animals could speak, that they were in possession of rich consciousness, but that man wouldn\u2019t condescend to listen. ‘It is through the vanity of the same imagination that [man] equates himself with God,’ Montaigne wrote, ‘that he attributes divine attributes for himself, picks himself out and separates himself from the crowd of other creatures.’ Montaigne asked: ‘When I play with my cat, who knows if she is making more of a pastime of me than I of her?’<\/p>\n

Montaigne\u2019s question is as playful as his cat. Apology [for Raymond Sebond]<\/em><\/a> is not meant to answer the age-old question, but rather to provoke; to tap into an unending inquiry about the reasoning of animals. Perhaps, Montaigne implies, we simply misunderstand the foreign language of animals, and the ignorance is not theirs, but ours…<\/p>\n

No matter how different, each genre of the talking animal exists on a continuum of the same fantasy. It is a reflection of a series of particular human desires, formed by historical needs and written onto the talking animal. Speaking animals provide us with the potential of an entirely different world — a world that is reminiscent of our own, even familiar, and yet still uncanny enough to maintain the fantasy. As the feminist scholar Donna Haraway wrote in 1978: ‘We polish an animal mirror to look for ourselves.’<\/p>\n

But perhaps that mirror is more suited for a funhouse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Stassa Edwards [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Pass Me That Wrench,” by June Yarham; found on Flickr, of course, and used here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!)] From whiskey river (italicized lines): Sometimes a Voice (1) Sometimes a voice—have you heard this?— wants not to be voice any longer, wants something whispering between the words, some rumour of its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Mixed (and missed) messages: 'What You Thought Was Said'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,250,5,251,4159],"tags":[4800,4801,4802,4803,4804,4805],"class_list":{"0":"post-20565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"category-essays","12":"tag-communication","13":"tag-don-mckay","14":"tag-gregory-orr","15":"tag-stassa-edwards","16":"tag-saying","17":"tag-not-saying","18":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5lH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20565"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20574,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20565\/revisions\/20574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}