eros, logos: on words

Friday, January 30, 2009

on words

Logos is part of what drives me to write, here and elsewhere. Logos: the word made flesh. Thoughts are not complete until they are expressed, whether in writing or in speech, and I have this compulsion to express certain ones of mine here, if nowhere else. I write here as I think to myself, and in writing here I discover or uncover the narrative of my own life, my secret history, secret because unknown even to myself until it is given expression. This is why I have the illusion of privacy when I write here most personally, as though it were a note in a bottle that I then buried, as though I dug a hole in the earth and whispered to it alone my secrets, and then covered it up hastily and left, leaving no sign by which anyone could find it, including me.

That is one reason for the name of this narrative. The other reason is that the two are not distinct for me. I can't say why this is so, except that it has something to do with the deep connection between mind and body. I would like to be solely one or the other, at times, but I never can seem to manage that trick.

Words are what undo me; they have saved me and they save me every day, and yet they also ravage me, ravish me. I can find myself stripped more naked by words than I could ever be by hands, and I can be stripped bare by the words of someone who does not know me nor write for me, and wrote 300 years ago.

And now I would like to write about the words we use in fucking.

I wrote recently here in defense of the word whore. The meaning of words is not fixed and static, and I loathe the sensibility which would take them to be so, that would overlook the importance of speaker's intent, and I also despise the idea that having been named is sufficient for naming.

We name ourselves and create ourselves and each other anew by so doing, and this is one reason why lovers always struggle against the limits of language: Why are there no words in English other than love, to express what I feel? the lover laments, and it is felt as a physical pain, that absence, that grief, that lack.

Words abandon us precisely when we would want them most, to capture the transcendent. This is when they abandon the most rational of us, in the extremity of passion, whether that passion be grief or eros, and there is nothing I have treasured more, erotically, than the ability to reduce someone brilliantly articulate to cries and gasps and the inability to speak; there is nothing that moves me more, as eros or logos, than to do that, to steal thought from those who value it highly, along with their breath.

This simply isn't possible unless one is dealing with someone normally hyper-cerebral. There is no art or skill involved in rendering the already mute inarticulate, and I can find no true pleasure there. It's also what I treasure in a lover, the reciprocal ability to reduce me from a thinking thing to a creature of sensation and appetite alone.

And so I also love the tearing down of walls. I love the demolishing of old and false ideas, and I find something of that same intellectual passion in tearing down inhibition, mine and those of my lover. I want to get inside him. I want to peel him open. I want everything. I want to ravish him as he does me. I want to break down those walls, and train the voice that speaks so well and fluently of ideas or of love, to say also I want to fuck you, and not only I want to make love to you.
I need that. Sometimes the word fuck is the only one that will fit, and it strikes me as wrong--as foolish, as sad, as aesthetically impoverished --to think that the use of those words must mean the absence of love also.

I think this is one reason for the peculiar bed death of many longterm relationships, this belief that the same voice that says I want to protect you from pain, cannot be the same voice that says, I need to bend you over that desk and fuck you hard right now. It requires a kind of trust, a kind of faith. Most of all it requires nakedness, the ability to bear being naked like that.

But that's what I value, nakedness.

As syllable from sound.
Emily Dickinson, CXXVI

Labels: pretentious wank, whore, words

posted by O @ 07:15


12 Comments:
At 30 January, 2009, Anonymous said… Reading this makes me realise how astute you are. And at how good at fucking you are. Your words can tell me that too. At 30 January, 2009, A Sinful Affair said… Oh my how we all pour wour words out in expression of what rolls through our heads. I will admit the making love or the plaing fuck me idea I tend to go both ways and depending on what I am in the mood for. At 30 January, 2009, Anonymous said… First of all, I love how you labeled this post "pretentious wank." The ability for language to take on all shapes and color and morph from one meaning to another and then back again is mesmerizing. One must look at the entire context to find meaning. A word alone is nothing without it's supporting cast. Although sometimes "fuck me" says it all... At 30 January, 2009, Aurore said… This my friend, is an example of your writing that I admire. I am constantly amazed how language is simultaneously fluid - ever changing, morphing - and limited - unbending, lacking, unable to fully explain human experience. At the moment, I feel unable to express my need - it is more than need but I do not know a word that fully represents what I feel At 30 January, 2009, Evil Minx said… Ah, pretentious wank. I loves me some pretentious wank. But this wasn't it, so there, ner. It's such an interesting concept. Being bilingual (that's bi-lingual, perverts) myself, I find the lack of flexibility in English -- a particular example being the word love -- is aggravating, to put it mildly. The Greeks have it right about sooooo many things, this being just one of them. [See also cheese, olive oil, philosophy and, of course ass(ociated)-fuckery.] At 30 January, 2009, Anonymous said… "Words are what undo me; they have saved me and they save me every day, ... I can find myself stripped more naked by words than I could ever be by hands" Fuck. Whoa. That sentence knocked me on my sizeable ass, and has left me sitting there winded. Pretentious wank, hell no. Writing from the heart is what it is. Adn evocative. And moving. If that makes me pretentiously wanky too, so be it. Sapphire the Elegant Slut At 30 January, 2009, L. said… Speaking of pretentious wank (of which I am overly fond), Steiner had a good essay on the language of love and sex in My Unwritten Books. The Tongues of Eros. Sex talk is different in certain cultures. The French have a thing about tu/vous familiarity, even while fucking. The Germans and the Scandinavians tend to be a little cold and efficient. The Italians are poetic. All gross generalizations, of course, but funny. And secretly accurate. And of course, Americans: crass, blunt, and to the point perfect. What shocks us in our mother tongue is also what undoes us and reveals us. At 30 January, 2009, selkie said… I've never had a huge issue with the word 'whore', 'slut', 'fuck, or any of them. but one thing i've learned in my own musings is that words ultimately hold only the power you give them - thus they can indeed be all powerful, cruel, wonderul, heartbreaking .. all of it and none of it. i've written before too about how the christian world has sought for centuries to remove the gross relaity of our physical bodies form the spiritual realm when at the end, we are both - and each is equally as important. to see FUCK me is neither crass nor rude - in the right context it is sublimly spiritual because when you take him into you, you are taking his body but his spirit also- FUCK me please can be a revelatory moment in time where you touch realms sought through other avenues in more conventional ways. At 30 January, 2009, Frequent Traveler said… The men I've loved the most and instantly had the most beautiful incisive way with words... I had to learn that honesty and words can be separate, and that BOTH qualities need to be there for it/the relationship to be healthy for me. Blogging/words/expression has such freedom in it. At 31 January, 2009, O said… Vronsky, thank you for the compliment. asweetnectar, I know what you mean. Isn't it nice to find both in one person--very rare, sadly. my beloved button, I'm glad you liked the label. I don't really take myself as seriously as most of this blog would probably lead people to think. And I love your image of the word's supporting cast. Aurore, Thank you! I think we're going through some similar things lately; I find much to admire and identify with in what you write. Minxy, my cunning linguist, you know how I adore you. At 31 January, 2009, O said… Sapphire, we revel together in the wank. Wank on sister, wank on! L, I haven't read the Steiner essay, it sounds like it'd be right up my little alley, so to speak. You said, What shocks us in our mother tongue is also what undoes us and reveals us. --So true! and so well put. Selkie, I couldn't agree more. Thank you for such a thoughtful and perceptive--and illuminating--comment. loving Annie, you said I had to learn that honesty and words can be separate, and that BOTH qualities need to be there for it/the relationship to be healthy for me. Something I have to learn to, and keep learning. hugs, O At 01 February, 2009, DnWormer said… Interesting take on the importance of words. I've always placed more value on actions and often found words superfluous, sort of an "enjoy the silence" thing, but to totally downplay their power is short sighted.
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