Words stuck in the throat
Today we all worked on the methods I have developed for capturing verbal descriptions of experience. Once again I notice that the techniques I use are very much based in people’s ability to express themselves, to find the right words, to describe in language experiences that might be amorphous, multilayered and complex.But, once again, I was also struck by how beautiful and how revealing people’s descriptions of their experience can be. It made me acknowledge something which I sometimes forget. That language is fabulous, flexible, wonderful, multilayered, amorphous and complex – much like physical movement and bodily sensation. Like movement it can also be precise and specific. Like movement it exists very privately and personally for each of us alone, and, at the same time in the field of possibilities for shared communication that exist between people.
Catherine has said a few times that when she is working – when she is making things – words “stick in her throat”. Words in the throat. Stuck. For me this is a very powerful image that conveys the vexed and intimate connection between language and the body. Our mouths, tongues and throats speak our experience. Our arms and hands write our experience. So much of our selves poured through these parts of our bodies. The work they do.
After a whole day running a workshop my mouth is dry, my throat is scratchy, my tongue is swollen and lazy. After 6 months of typing typing typing my thesis everyday, just sitting here to write these few words is painful. I feel the same old muscles, my right shoulder my left forearm, my neck, immediately fall into their habitual weary pattern of strain. But I also feel good. I want to type. I love to make these words, to chose them, to decide on them, to construct sentences that say what I mean.
How can I make these instruments of expression clearer, more free, less painful? What can Maggie and Catherine’s knowledge of movement, organisation of movement and freedom of movement bring to that. Are there exercises for the mouth, tongue, fingers, lips, shoulders, throat that can help me “speak” more freely.
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