[h] silence
In the beginning there was silence. And then there was language, and then there was "h". And then there was silence, again.
!
What would possess someone to embark on a
journey to follow a single letter around the globe? It's a fair question, I suppose. As an art student, philology aficionado, obsessive compulsive writer and part time ethno-etymologist I was pretentious enough to think I might be able to understand the history behind the silence that once was something else. What I found was a scar on time, subtly reminding the world of the supreme eradication of peoples through linguistic genocide, yet it's superscript ʰ is used to represent aspiration.
! !
Indeed, a silent letter must tell it's own story as the
message is the messenger. Alone, h stands for nothing but a memory carefully put away by time, mankind's inability to process and cope with destruction, and perhaps a certain degree of unknowing guilt. Next to another letter however, the h becomes a game changer, making a difference, perhaps borrowing meaning from it's neighbouring glyph, and it is perhaps this beautiful contradiction that instigated curiosity in the questioning linguist in me. Then I discovered it's many variations, fruits of linguistic evolution or barbaric conquests of lands near and far. Neighbours, invading each other in the quest of expansion and new meaning, politicians and philosophers writing new histories with the sounds familiar to their their subordinate race. !
The Romans, invading the Greek and retaining
native characters only just to later silence them, are literally a classic example of the imposed birth of a suppressive silence. The Spaniards, spotting Portuguese invaders who subtly pronounced their h as an f are testimony to how important that silence was in the survival of the fittest of all of the New Continent Empires. Today, in England the classes spot each other in pronunciation, as the naive Haitch is seemed to prevail with the uneducated "minority" amongst the classes. Perhaps we are now unable to accept an organic, non-violent evolution of language.
!
I remember carefully mapping the timely journey
from ancient empires to conquistador lands and back to Modern Europe from my small, static, quiet room. I remember trying to understand how to transpose destruction onto mankindʼs greatest creation: language and how we use it to bring a nation, or an individual down. And I remember figuring out that sometimes, silence is the loudest of sounds. ! Now, four years later my judgement still stands, so I revisit this work but leave it untouched, I feel right now it is ready to speak out loud. ! ! Know as a voiceless fricative, there is every reason to try to understand how depicting silence in language came about. Eta, Iota, Kappa, mutating letters. Aitch, Aka, ˈatʃ, ˈaːtʃ, Hic: symbols, phonemes, raisons d'être: The trace a people leave in passing by.
June 2011
We tied words together in order to tell the story of all civilisations, but we forgot that every word holds within itself the History of Civilisation. We take language for granted and dismiss it as the most powerful tool available to mankind. April 2004
space for (un)comfortable silence et(h)er forgotten by choice
cha
sed
ends
otic omission im(ex)po
ent corners inner rough
Breakettes
Viol
Dis(crete) sur-ender Sailed ash/hore Dis(own)ed intention Of free:dooms av speech Missunder-stood re(main)dear Traceversal sore est East ist left of heard quorae Unpredictable lingus Sur/pass sur/phace Amp(h)oe始bian skin Ov thickened cultures Put off with Forge-ot(h)er b(R)other
Fatter neutro vestri Digammous affair Of freedom and soils Has just become frivial fornication the roots now torn from o-f-uums gone need no replacement in this alfa(llic)bet your silence say it all Af lost the lapse Left av the land F/H(acto) lonely Journey passed Crossed the ffaters (f/h)ago this(function)al time totus supremus orbis terrarum flat
Pcychlotic dis/certer Where av you been So lung would pass Be(fore) encountering your Latinletters empty h(and)ed led the line im(played) aGo your thread mind mine cause:ue red hart(ed) nah茂ve fra始gile taken a way in favour my grace re-moved your act pro-phound in watcher bound by silence(d)
trac(es) left-behind points passing by un(forgett)able voids remain after sounds…have, left dead, time absolute absence of presence past silent reminders of space lostfound(s), then lost again unfini(shed) ends, with no means per-haps they never mattered
Violent corners inner rough ends Space for comfortable silence Ether forgotten by choice Chaotic omission imposed Omitted omnipresence unnoticed Of violent corners and inner rough ends