Yearning for an Asteroid

“Of that of which we cannot speak we must be silent.” – L. Wittgenstein.

“Metaphysics is the science of being qua being.” – Aristotle.

Yet, are we not, John and Number 6, creatures who only define ourselves – only really know ourselves – through speech? Wittgenstein and Aristotle both spoke many words in many volumes, sometimes, paradoxically, recommending speechlessness. That’s a strategy which naturally appeals to talky people. Talkers get sick of talk. However, I am not like that. I have a horror of speechlessness. It smacks of the grave. I never tire of talk, though I often long for it to be better than it is (self’s included).

When I was young a certain kind of guy got a reputation for profundity just by never opening his mouth. Periodic sighs and the striking of decorative attitudes sometimes supplemented the wordlessness. This impressed me. At least until I came to suspect that keeping quiet was a screen: nothing interesting was going on behind that wordless facade. Mute dopiness had no appeal for me at all (nor for Wittgenstein or Aristotle). I grant that silence in strategic doses (which I interpret John’s as being) is part of life’s rhythm. Like the rests in music, such silences render the sounds which precede and follow them resonant. Let the rests, please God, not last so long I forget the tune. Soon enough comes the big sleep and the neverending silence. Clash the cymbal and bang the drum while you await it!

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KJ doesn’t seem to understand “irony”, and apparently has never seen any of The Prisoner, thus not getting the references i make…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner

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“To talk to you I gotta use words.” – T.S. Eliot.

“For me to understand you, your words gotta make sense.” – K.J. Webb

Just kidding, #6. I like your style, and I do believe you scored a palpable hit upon me. My misspent youth included very little exposure to irony and none at all to “The Prisoner.” Words, we can agree, are talismanic stones – slippery, powerful and gleaming with portent. Hurl them, lob them, caress them, make a castle of them. Use carefully, elegantly, dangerously or beautifully. Never perfunctorily or ideologically – lest babble or Babel befall you.

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“Mere words” is fightin’ words. Nothing can beat words, when used by the masters, for depicting the fullness of human experience in all its subtlety. Music is a glorious thing, a self-contained world of its own, a mainline to the emotional center of things. True, but that’s just another way of calling it a binge, a holiday from life. Not continuously satisfying. We need binges, of course.

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But when old Abe opened his mouth the most wonderful of words poured out of it – not just words, but phrases, chains of reasoning, emotional utterances intimately bound to logic. Even Vonnegut got in a few good licks. We’re all tuning up our voices here on earth, in the daily give and take of our lives, for the moment when the stars line up and we’re finally able to say what we want to say in the way we want to say it.

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