Any time I sit and think about human language I tend to get a little nauseous. I start deconstructing everything about it and I end up breaking through the absurdist veil. The crazy thing is that, as of right now, I couldn’t tell you what’s on the other side of the vail. I KNOW what’s out there, but I literally cannot tell you because language is limiting and one of the few ways to communicate human to human is through language itself. A barely explored part of human understanding past language exists. I know that for a fact, but how can we talk about it if we can’t talk about it? Can art replace traditional language?
There’s a popular bible story called The Tower of Babel. Here’s a quick recap for anyone that skipped Sunday school. One day, everyone gets together and decides that they’re going to build a tower tall enough to reach God. Everyone cooperates and they start building this giant structure. They actually get pretty close to reaching God. One night, as they approached completion, God comes down admiring and praising the structure. He then concludes that humans can and will become unstoppable (and cocky) if they work together as one tribe, so He proceeds to scatter everyone’s language so that they can no longer communicate. The next morning, everyone wakes up but can no longer understand each other. So they leave the tower unfinished and everyone goes their separate ways.
Traditionally, church goers agree that this story is meant to explain the different languages of the world, English, Arabic, Mandarin, etc. I don’t think it does. I think that we tend to use our modern views of the world as filters when interpreting spiritual texts and we end up stripping all intended meaning from the story. What if this story has more to do with explaining how difficult it gets to communicate concepts that are outside of human reasoning? What if this tower was an honest attempt by mankind to understand transcendent concepts like divinity or God?
The tower may be more of a metaphor, maybe they were stacking concepts on top of each other instead of bricks. Perhaps they got pretty far, but they hit a ceiling. At some point, personal interpretations and subjectivity begin to muddy the conversational waters. They make it impossible to agree or disagree on anything without someone getting offended. I mean, have you tried having a political conversation with someone lately? Even if you’re on the “same side” you end up clashing with your interlocutors.
So, can we finish building the Tower of Babel? Nah. It might be an impossible task. HOWEVER, we can keep building it, but we need to stop talking. Language is a funny thing. What do we do when we wanna talk about our dreams? Not our goals, but our literal dreams, the magical abstract places we visit when we fall asleep. Isn’t it crazy how we have can only “kinda” tell each other what we dream? What about when we “fall in love” or have a near death experience? Have you ever had a reality shattering experience? It’s difficult to tell anyone about these things. It’s usually met with an uninterested or confused face.
Can we shed language all together? Probably not. Is there an alternative to expressing ourselves? Art and all of its mediums might be the answer. Perhaps creativity can help us express those things that we can’t necessarily put into words. We can create an infinite number of art works that express complex ideas. I find it easier to draw a dream than to explain it to someone. Explaining a dream always feels to me like I’m not doing the dream justice. Drawing it or writing a poem about it on the other hand feels right. To sit there and engage in the creative act as I find the right words or color. Recalling what the dream made me feel and trying to translate it into art is just beautiful. To sit there with yourself and your feelings, is there any higher form of quality time with ones self?
I’m bilingual. Fluent in both English and Spanish. My first language was Spanish and i learned English as a child. Learning to create art reminds me of the process I went through when I learned English. Translating concepts from spoken language into art requires knowing what we’re trying to communicate. Colors, images, sounds and even words (as in poetry or story telling) can awaken something in us that point us to the story or emotion we’re trying to get across. There are songs that remind us of experiences in our lives that are meaningful to us in ways that can’t be put in conversation. Seeing a sunset on a canvas can mean so much more than saying “there was a beautiful sunset”.
As I’m learning how to paint, I keep coming across the concept of “rendering light”. Getting the shades and highlights to interact in a specific way to accentuate an area of the painting is a powerful way to tell the viewer what’s important to us. Highlighting a part of an artwork through color or shades is how we say “look this is a crucial part of what I’m trying to tell you”. Same goes with sound. The way an instrument is played can tell us more about the song than the lyrics. The energy we put into the effort of creating art is key to getting our ideas across, and that takes practice and intention. The same ways we put effort in communicating something in a foreign language.
The beauty of art is that there is no one to one translation. Art is open to the audience’s interpretation. Sometimes, even the reaction of those that interact with our art tell us more about it than what we initially intended to express. I’m obsessed with the idea of making art speak. Literally tell us things about itself through what we choose to put on it. Without having to write blogs or standing at a gallery telling any passerby about it. Learning to make art speak for itself, that is a personal goal and aim with every single thing I create (except this blog maybe lol.)
We all gravitate towards specific topics. Sports, cars, the weather, even tools. Our everyday conversations tell us about who we really are when we look back. I really like philosophy, but is so fucking complex sometimes. To sit there and have a conversation about nihilism or the world of ideas is beautiful but time consuming and tedious sometimes. Infinity fascinates me as of lately. All of the infinities we can fathom. The ones that exist and those we create when we fall into thought loops and eternal regression. When people ask things like, “who created god?”, I get stuck in a thought loop. But if I sit there and write a poem or create an abstract painting about it, I feel like I’m actually getting somewhere with it.
I don’ think that using art as a language is a new idea, but I do find it important that we approach art with the intent of saying something, anything. Art is a language that is universal. You don’t need to speak English to know that The Beatles’ music can be transcendent. You can feel it. The way we react to art is the unspoken translation of the creator’s intent.
Art can make us think things that we have never considered as possibilities before. To arrange reality in a specific sequence using artistic mediums is no different than putting letters together to create a word. Then we use those words to create sentences, tell stories and create narratives. Putting meaningful artworks together begin with the ideas we’re trying to communicate. Even if it’s a simple idea like, “a lovely sunset”, as long as we know what we’re trying to get across, it will show in the artwork.
I sometimes think that we even subconsciously say things through art without necessarily meaning to. Things about ourselves, our fears, shames, preferences and all else that hides beneath the privacy of our vulnerability. It’s like speaking with an accent, we try to say something but it comes out as something different. The more I sit here and write about art as a language I realize that drawing parallels between the two might end up limiting art. Art is infinite, it has no limits. Perhaps approaching art as a language must be done so with caution. If we impose similar limiting parameters on it, the way we do we language, we might end up taking away what makes it so wonderful. Its freedom.
As I’m getting ready to finish this post, I wonder how much taller the tower can get using art as a language. I worry that we will hit another glass ceiling if we restrict art to being a language. Art is much more than that but its communicative applications are something that I genuinely want to explore further. It also occurs to me that, maybe building a tower is rudimentary at this point in human history. Perhaps we can build some sort of metaphorical “spaceship” using art instead of a structure that’s attached onto the ground, to explore infinity. Maybe in order to reach higher places of knowledge and understanding about reality we must let go of the ground and all things that keep us attached.
Art can go much further than language can, but not if we keep it attached to what we know. Maybe letting go of what we know is the first step towards experiencing and interacting with new things, beyond language and human comprehension. Perhaps art and creativity can lead us there. But must let go of our attachments, like wanting everything to be comparative, or wanting everything to make sense. We use language to express ourselves and make sense of things here on this Sacred Earth. Maybe art can be used to express that which does not make sense, beyond what we know.
-Adam 9/28/23