wahn

When I worked in London I was travelling by underground every day from
Brixton (where I lived) to Oxford Circus (where I worked). On several
occasions I noticed a poem which was written somewhere in the tube
where you normally would expect advertisments. I can't remember the
exact words and kind of regret that I didn't write it down. But
basically it was about someone coming to London (like me) and English
being not his or her first language (or native tongue). So he or she
felt like someone "cut out my tongue".

A quite violent picture but somehow it describes exactly how I felt. I
mean it took forever to express myself in my mother tongue and when I
started to work "abroad" I was used already to write English emails
for a couple of years. But I wasn't really used to speak it. First
there is a slight delay when someone talks to you until it reaches
your brain. Your ears are not used to the rhythm and your expectations
and phrases in your head don't match what you hear. Then you translate
the heared into your native language, form an answer, and translate it
back to English. By then the other person is gone - or maybe not. But
you start to feel really like your tongue wouldn't follow your
instructions (or wouldn't be there at all). So I liked that metaphor.

The end of the poem (it was short anyway but not that short) was that
after a while "a new tongue was growing" (replacing the old
one). Growing takes quite a while. If you watch a flower for hours (or
days) you might never "see" it growing. Nevertheless it does and after
a couple of years in a foreign country you will learn a lot of daily
phrases to fill the gaps (mind the gap) in a conversation. Kind of
smalltalk which a lot of people are so good at. Suddenly quite useful
to free your brain to think about the stuff you might really want to
say.

A couple of years before I seriously considered to move to and live
in NY. A friend (a writer) who lived there over 20 years showed me
around and introduced me to his friends. They showed me their poems
and even though English is considered to be a relative "easy to learn"
language I was very frustrated because I "felt" that there were words
"inbetween" the words - a hidden meaning I wasn't able to
understand. Not because I missed too many words but because I grew up
somewhere else, had a complete different background and wasn't able to
play with words like I possibly could in my native language. Not that
I write poems but you know what I mean. Anyway, smoking some pot
helped us to enjoy the evening and sometimes you see the character of
a person in her or his eyes and you don't need any words anymore. I
decided not to move to NY ...

So what was I about to say?

Cut out your tongue !!!

Just kidding, I better hold mine now.



Abyssus abyssum invocat

Wahn