Unspeakable

I (used to think that I) have a superpower.

When I’m listening to music, I can close my eyes and see a whole world of brilliant, dazzling dancing, choreographed perfectly to the music … the colors of the costumes, the energy in the movement, the spins and swirls and solo acts or arrays of synchronized, rhythmic, human art …

But it’s all mine, trapped in my mind. I can only close my eyes and watch the show. One time it was so breathtaking I snapped my eyes open and said “            “ … nothing. My thoughts caught on my tongue and I found myself literally speechless. I was momentarily shell shocked by the complete frustration at not being able to translate vision to language. If I could only capture this, I knew I could create Broadway-worthy musicals, Grammy-award-winning theatre … but it was always and only a dream – vivid, lucid, perfect, and completely unspeakable.

Which brought me around to thinking again about a question I had spent years and hours contemplating – how do deaf people think? Or more specifically and abstractly – how would a person who was cut off from language of any sort process thought? How much would this isolation limit his ability to observe and make sense of this life? How much are our thoughts confined to formally defined and acquired vocabulary? To what extent are we sheltered from the infinite spheres of thought, just because the right words haven’t been spoken that would unlock worlds of ideas beyond the initiation and creation of our own mind? If someone was locked out of language altogether, need he be stunted in his intellectual thought-processing abilities? Or does the vast majority of our subjective understanding occur without language? While no one can truly exist in an intellectual vacuum, it is worth considering the limitations set by our domain of information.

And yet … surely our mind can access realms unknown to communication – as I realized in that startling moment of open-mouthed surprise, shocked that my words could betray me and leave me so thoroughly alone in myself. Our minds must have a touch of eternity, an element of the infinite; but to access that requires something that can break beyond the standard framework-barriers of language, something that can defy description. I know that music and art can do this, that a rainy day, scented candles, fuzzy blankets and peace with the world can do this. I believe that birth and death, love or hate can trigger this – this connection with infinite spheres of thought, sense, and visceral feeling known completely in oneself but unintelligible in communication.

And to express a fraction of an idea, a flash of a scene, a deeply intuitive sense of something elusively beautiful … this is art.