In the old days, when feet walked real earth and kicked up dust, the spores rose in the air and got sucked in through our noses. The image changed under the influence of another sense; became informed by a contrary or complimentary message. But it didn’t last long. The possiblity of escaping the tyranny of images faded. We are grown to love the image. Open our eyes and be in wonder. Close them and dream images in even more vivid color. We look for a richness. We are hungry for something unspoken, unseen. We seek. An image arises. Fades into another. We are always on the road of hunger. Have forgotten so many millions of images. Yet some become our familiars; treasured icons of our hungry yearning. A mirage in our journey. An oasis in the desert of our vision. We are starved the moment we are born. Image. See. Look. We go on. Put our faith in finding the big meal. The image that will marry us to our desire forever. We wish to be owned by our image. We wish to belong.

A Piece of String

The old man drew a curved line in the sand. A sign showing the wave of things. Sitting in the bleaching sun. A dry finger pointing. He uttered something, but it needed translating into two hundred and seventy five languages. It came out wrong. Slightly different in each. The meaning lost or gone fuzzy. Not quite precise. But the image remained. Became a symbol. Was shown around the world. Became inexplicable. Something to ponder. Does it have meaning? A piece of string. Something to unite the image. Something to tie it to the next. Or to another image of an entirely different order. He tried to show something but the image ruled. It always rules. It doesn’t need Logos. Happy is the mind lost in the shopping mall of never-ending images. Drunk on one and then another. We don’t notice. It slips under our noses. We desire the new. An image gets stale to the eye if held too long. Besides we are not trained to hold or consider or investigate. The next slips in with such an ease we don’t take note. We fall into it willingly. Hungry for image. We have no will to stop. No idea that it’s possible or desirable either. Image is life. No image is death, even though black can also be considered an image. There is no escape, ordinarily anyways.

Excerpt from The Hungry Image, an argument in progress.

Mauri Mask

To ut-ter, is to speak

… the line of language

by Andrew Lovatt

To utter is to “make sound”. It comes with its own meaning.

An utterance grows from a sound. (Or is it a sound which is born from the will to utter? ) A single tone becomes an utterance by changing into two and more tones. The line of language extends from the word. Just as a tone flows into polytonal expression, these compound sounds form words which flow into meaning. This sequential expression of polytonal sounds attempts to convey the meaning of something which is essentially unspeakable. It is the convention of the sequence and our acceptance of it which makes language understandable. We agree to agree that these utterances, intoned in a sequential line approximate or evoke to some degree something we wish to express.

“a song is not a Nightingale

if it is sung by a Bear

Each rock in the universe

embodies its own unique sound”

Notes: An intonation is the sly intelligence at work in language.

In the old days, when feet walked real earth and kicked up dust, the spores rose in the air and got sucked in through our noses. The image changed under the influence of another sense; became informed by a contrary or complimentary message. But it didn’t last long. The possiblity of escaping the tyranny of images faded. We are grown to love the image. Open our eyes and be in wonder. Close them and dream images in even more vivid color. We look for a richness. We are hungry for something unspoken, unseen. We seek. An image arises. Fades into another. We are always on the road of hunger. Have forgotten so many millions of images. Yet some become our familiars; treasured icons of our hungry yearning. A mirage in our journey. An oasis in the desert of our vision. We are starved the moment we are born. Image. See. Look. We go on. Put our faith in finding the big meal. The image that will marry us to our desire forever. We wish to be owned by our image. We wish to belong.

Excerpt from The Hungry Image, an argument in progress.

…and you’d think that having a free blather space would suit the Irish no end, being folks who like to banter and generally carry on verbally! Which is why you’ll find the mobile phone in the hands of nearly every Irish person from pre-teens on up… as if the technology was invented with just themselves in mind.

…and here’s the drift of it all – that there is more in the message than the mere words: the form of speech in Ireland is decidedly Gaelic, dressed in Hiberno-English. As if they’d take this foreign Anglo vowel thing and twist it and use it ’til it didn’t sound like the original at all, at all. When we hear Irish English we’re hearing the rhythms of Gaelic and the wit of the Irish mind.

That’ll do for a start. Welcome… and don’t forget to check out our main site!

Andrew Lovatt
editor
deaddrunkdublin & other imaginal spaces