I cannot keep a musical note, but that has never stopped me from singing in the shower

I intended to submit a commentary in response to Macca’s* reply to my original post, but I need to provide greater clarity on my own (very personal) position with regards the English language as a technical communicative function — as opposed to a socio-historical phenomenon.

Let me say, first, that the point I made about fluency in my initial post was really a reference to how difficult it is for me to write and/or speak English. And, my apparent protestations about the imperialism of English notwithstanding, I constantly try to improve my grammar, and hope to someday write something of substance in a manner that is acceptable — at least to myself.

With further reference to my initial post, by noting the hegemony of English I was simply affirming its status as an objective reality — without any possible reification, whatsoever. I simply consider English to be a hegemonic language regardless of whether I think it is good or bad. As a means of communication, I believe that it is, and that it ought to be built upon a basic structure. What do I mean by basic structure? Let me try an analogy.

In some ways, I consider language to be like music (now I am out of my depth — hereafter I take no responsibility for what I write) and believe that one can play any variation on any theme. One can apply atonal or twelve-tonal techniques, one can play West African polyrhythms, or one can rely an aleatoric approach (for a while I spent a lot of time listening to the work of Pierre Boulez, John Cage and Arnold Schonberg) by leaving parts of a composition to serendipity or chance. However, I have a sense that there is a basic set of fundamentals — keys, intervals, chords and scales — which are the starting point(s) of all musical compositions. At least this was the lesson my friend the late, great, James Phillips once tried to instill in me, before he decided that there were probably not enough hours in a day to give me daily guitar lessons; so we went to Jameson’s instead and did the lurch.

But, but, but I do believe that it was probably easier for John Cage to compose his signature Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds of silence than it would be to not fill a page with words, although I believe that this has been attempted. I seem to recall an anecdote told to me by the teacher who has inspired me the most (in all my years of formal and informal learning), Christopher Coker, of the London School of Economics, about a writer who described a snow storm in Russia by simply leaving a few pages blank … I would have to check with him to confirm that it was indeed he who told me this story.

Nevertheless, like music I believe that language as means of communication is structured around basic fundamentals; it does not always have to make sense immediately, but the more we listen/read, the greater insight and/or clarity may be had. For example, it took me about two years of almost daily listening to “understand” Song X, the free jazz album by Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny. Also, in February 1989 I sat through a 30 or 40-minute piano composition by Cecil Taylor which felt, at the time, like a violent assault on my senses. I had never, and will never see anyone use a keyboard the way that Taylor did on that night at Sweet Basil — unless, by some miracle, I can convince CG to dance on a grand piano. There’s a documentary out there somewhere on Taylor’s philosophy about music which will probably discredit everything I have said in this post. But between writer’s licence and the fact that this is a blog I can probably get away with bits of bollocks here and there.

With regard to literature and language, it took three reads for me to feel comfortable with James Joyce’s Ulysses (I can’t say I understand it), and seven reads later, I am still trying to find the essence of Being and Nothingness. I should hasten to add that I am not an essentialist! Everyone I have consulted on the book, or to whom I have complained about its abstruseness, has always told me to read it in French; my reply is always the same — I am still trying to learn English.

So … I will continue to write in English.

I cannot keep a musical note, but that has never stopped me from singing in the shower.

* Macca is usually the moniker given to people whose names start with the Gaelic (I think) Mac …