Language and our capacity to communicate

So many articles of late lament the nature of public discourse. The dog whistles, the sound bites, the 'spin', the cliches. Kate Holden yesterday and Barry Jones today. The discussion of ideas, the debates on merit are lost to shrill positions which play to prejudices.

The death of Robert Hughes yesterday sent me back to his tomes-magnificent books on art The Shock of the New, my inscribed copy of American Visions, his ode to fishing A Jerk on the End and his magnificent piece on Australian history, The Fatal Shore. Hughes in The Fatal Shore describes the delineation of language by land, landscape, rivers, ridges and other natural barriers. Tribes around Sydney Harbour spoke different languages, and they had no need to learn each others' tongues as their self sufficient lifestyle made them content where they were, in a land replete with food and the harbour filled with fish.

We observe the world and make sense of it-interpret and reflect on the experience which is ours. Hughes says his fishing taught him much about art-the observation, the attention to tiny changes, the effects of light through water, the movement of ripples and what they meant.

We assume our take on the world as natural-to us it is. But with the rise of online comment, has our language, and with it, our ideas, begun to degenerate? I wonder if the immediacy of comment, the rush to make note first has made our reflections intemperate. This seems fairly obvious. Even the tools of emoticons and buttons to 'tweet' and 'like' and 'favourite' and 'retweet' and 'share' speak to a language of reduction. These forums are not the place for reflection.

The trolls are out and about in the world of online opinion. Today I read that Age/SMH blogger John Birmingham has had to increase monitoring and blocking due to the vile exchanges which fill his comments streams. Sullied waters. These rivers of mud blur true meaning too-hate-filled idealogues spew ill thought spears at each other.

My father might be losing his tongue...

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The Waiting

Morning walk. I wake too late to do my nature writing workshop so I decide to get out into nature instead! Head off at about 7 am, sustained on half a cup of hot water with lemon, a banana and a snack KitKat. Make it to the backbeach in time to see the gold coming up from behind the sand dunes, flowering light from the lighthouse. Tiny black and white wren on the rocks, the Plover family just foraging. A heavy gull takes off when I approach. It flies past me, sits and waits, and flies back as it senses I’m no danger. I take photos and slow-mo videos. I can hardly make out the flying birds as they rise into the dark clouds. I keep stopping to look at things. At one point I lie with my back in the sand on the edge of the dunes. All around the waves continue coming in and the birds call. What would I do without this? At the lighthouse, Galahs wheel and screech, their pink bellies exposed as they fly above me. A couple fall behind, screeching ‘wait for me, wait f...

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The bricks were always cold underneath my bum. Cold and hard. I could feel their sharp edges. In the nights we sat and talked, my brother and I and the neighbourhood boys. The smells of sour smoke and saliva on one, body odour on another, and menace on the other. The fluorescent globes hummed from the train station platform across the road, and the street lights pooled at the corner. Inside was out of bounds to these boys, so we met on our side stairs. The frosted glass door between us and our home. These were the kids we didn’t trust, the boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Where were their parents? Absent fathers, unsighted mothers, these boys roamed the streets and set me on edge. The attraction to the dirt, to the smell of one’s mouth...I can still feel it now. It was an urge, but not an infatuation. The hearts of these boys remained hidden. It was as if they walked in costumes, played their parts, and kept their distance. One day, my mum greeted me at...

Notes of Substance

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