No Words

 

Languages only work if they become standardized or universalized, such that perhaps hundreds or thousands of people are using it over a longer period of time. Languages die if that process doesn’t continually evolve and stay the same at the same time. Many people still can read and write music, but much less than 100 years ago. What parts of a universalized language remain after one or two centuries? All disciplines have their own patois, like the New Age Movement with “energy fields”: and “vibes”, even “higher consciousness”. Some of those terms are almost a century old, but still have no actual meaning as “molecule” has for example. "Molecule" is a "languaged" word, the word "creativity" isn't surprisingly. The West still hasn't embraced the idea of having "shades" of meaning, or different "color names". Inuits might have 50 words for snow, the Ifaluk have different shades of "annoying", for example. One of them is "tang" which describes the frustration that occurs “in the face of personal misfortunes and slights which one is helpless to redress.” This is where art and instrumental music have a useful function, and perhaps architecture.