The Dark Ship by Anne MacLeod

Author:Anne MacLeod
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781906000219
Publisher: Neil Wilson Publishing
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Calum works steadily through the morning. He loves his work. He may, at times, deny the art in it, even the craft … but words are what he lives by, what he lives for, even when he’s as tired as he is today. His love for Mairi would be sun to him, spring – if all would suddenly come right – but words and music are meat and drink; they make life possible. You can change the world with words.

Calum wonders if ideas can exist without words, without language.

He considers this.

There could be emotion, certainly; there is emotion in music … music can convey any given emotion in a visceral, more sensual way than words alone. And you can have a conversation of tunes between musicians, a flyting, as, indeed, he often had; yes, and music could paint landscape, describe it, just as paint might stimulate physical emotion, either by its style, or the quality of brush-work or image represented, or simply by its shape and colour.

These forms of communication were just that; conversations in paint or sound, bodily sensation whose meaning was conceived and transmitted by the artist – painter or composer – on the canvas, or in the tune; and usually it was a one-way conversation, a statement received, stimulating a reaction the original artist did not necessarily observe. Whereas language, thinks Calum, spoken language, can be two-way because words are quicker, more precise, more easily shared.

He is momentarily beguiled by the thought of a world where ideas and emotions may be sung or somehow played, in wordless music. Would it be possible to cope with such a spectrum of immediate physical interaction?

And what about colour, soundless language, played in light? It would be possible for a myriad interweaving of colour to communicate meaning, yes it would; but would such language travel, as sound did? Would it work at night?

Was language a cooler, more acceptable music, translating experience into manageable code?

He must talk to Alec about this. Alec would have an opinion. Alec would probably say it would all work fine, be more precise, with numbers instead of words.

Calum wonders if the war would have happened without words. Did the fact of different languages … of possible confusion, of endless misinterpretation … predict war? Or, say, if there were suddenly just the one language in the world, a single human language; would it stay like that, single? No, thought Calum. Not a chance. Individuality would soon make sure that differences arose, that language once again became diverse. There is strength in that, he thinks, in the possibility of richness, or chaos.

Did words generate ideas? Or did ideas ripple like waves through the different languages used by human populations? That’s a possibility. Ideas of peace, of war; ideas of love … but love is tied to person, usually, to sensual attraction, more emotion-led than intellectual, or at least, lust is (if physical love must all be lust, as Calum is inclined to think it).

But love for parents, for children, isn’t lust.

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