1. My previous post about the English language was on my mind throughout the day today.
My thoughts were long, but I'll keep my summary of them somewhat short.
Language is like music to me. I don't claim to be a particularly musical writer, but I respond to our language as I read it and listen to others use it as music.
Yesterday I wrote that when I hear our language misused, I might cringe.
I still pretty much stand by that, but it would be more accurate to say that the response I have is akin to if I'm listening to someone play an instrument or to someone singing and they hit a wrong note. Or if I know a song, hear someone sing it, and they flub the lyrics.
When I was a teacher, deep down inside, I wished my students could think of language as music. I tried hard to impress this idea upon my students, especially my literature students when we studied Shakespeare or poetry. It's a tough sell. Most people experience language as a utility, not a source of music. I get it.
With poetry, my students wanted to rush to the meaning of the poem. I tried to persuade them to regard a poem as first and foremost music (same with Shakespeare's plays and sonnets) and that often the sounds of the vowels and consonants in the words, the source of the music, would lead them to "meaning".
Maybe you cringe a little, or recoil, if you see that someone's row of flowers in a garden is crooked or if you see a load of logs assembled not quite right on a truck or if you eat some food that's not quite seasoned right.
That cringe you might feel goes beyond mere correctness.
The wrong note, the crooked garden rows, the ill-loaded logs, the food that's a little off goes against the grain of your sense of beauty and you feel it in your spirit or your soul when it's off.
So if someone says or writes, "Debbie met Walker and I at Starbuck's", I get the meaning, but the using of "I" instead of "me" is the wrong note, it's the zinnia out of place, it's the excess of basil in pasta sauce, it's the log placed in the middle of the load when it ought to be on top.
2. I should say, as I move on, that I often have very positive experiences with others' use of language. Honestly, if someone says, "Yeah, I got home and my kid was lying on the couch, not feeling well" instead of saying"laying on the couch", I feel the pleasure that comes with assembling IKEA furniture and having all the parts fit into place or the pleasure of hearing Bach pulling all the movements together at the end of his Goldberg Variations. It's the pleasure of having things fit together, of clicking into place.
I was thinking today about how indebted I am to Judith/Judy "Sparky" Roberts for my sense of beauty and proportion in language and other aspects of life. We started working together on different Shakespeare projects and other non-Shakespeare performances nearly thirty-five years ago. Her attention to the beauty of language, whether in Shakespeare's plays or in sketches we wrote together, had a huge influence on training my ears and enhancing my appreciation of visual beauty.
I wasn't much of an actor, but I got to be in four Shakespeare plays she directed and I think she encouraged and drew out of me every bit of my limited talent.
Well, today, coincidentally, in another thread started by Richard Leebrick, Sparky invited readers of that thread to watch a YouTube video of when she and two other whistlers appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. If you click on this link, you can see Judith/Judy/Sparky standing on her head, not only whistling, but narrating a puppet show. The puppets are on her feet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieL7-MFSyHU&t=1s
3. Debbie purchased a Toyota Corolla in New Jersey back in August. Registering the car in Idaho, securing the title, and having the Idaho license plates sent to her has involved one mystifying screw up after another and I've honestly lost track which of the screw ups were with the car dealership, which were with the lender, and which were with the Idaho Dept. of Transportation.
But, a couple of weeks ago, her Idaho registration arrived here in Kellogg.
A little later (or maybe a little before), the title arrived.
And, today, at long last, the license plates arrived.
Debbie arrived today in Woodbridge, VA to spend time over the holidays with Molly's family.
I will mail the plates on Monday to Virginia, hope they arrive before Debbie leaves Virginia in just over a week, and when they do arrive, her long mystifying registering the car in Idaho nightmare will be over.
Everything will have clicked, fallen into place, just like when I hear someone say "Melinda and I went shopping today" instead of "Me and Melinda . . ."
😄
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