Stuck in my head

[outsdr]

I've got some thoughts going around and over in my head.

It started when I was thinking about songs that are sung in a foreign language, yet are still able to cause an emotional reaction when I listen to them.

That led to me making this playlist on YouTube.

Some of these songs are also available in English versions, but they don't always make me react the same way: there's this feeling of alieness I experience, like I'm somewhere else in a different world. And yet, the emotions I feel are very much of this world.

I've been thinking of ways that words and poetry cause emotional ressonance, and how (if) sometimes, the meanings of the words can detract from the visceral emotion that is trying to be conveyed.

So how do I work around that?

I keep kicking around the idea in my head of spoken poetry that does not rely on understandable words to present emotion. But there's a hinderence in using a different language - for one, I don't know any other languages, and two, the words still have meaning, even if I do not know exactly what that meaning is, and that is enough to distract.

I keep listening to the playlist over and over (and the ads every other video are pretty damn distracting, too).

I'm thinking that the way for me to approach this is using words that sound real, but aren't. Not in the same sense of Dadaism, even if it was created by my beloved Marcel Duchamp. I'm not trying to do anti-poetry in a deconstructive form through meaningless nonsense presented as art, leaving the viewer to try and determine the seriousness of the artist, as well as the intention.

So while the words will be meaningless, the emotions will not be.

That's part one.

Now, thinking even further, can the emotions of poetry be presented without using any sound at all? Stories can be, of course. (Thank you, Marcel Marseau.) But broken down to just base emotional presentation, can poetry work not only without words, but without sound at all?

Can I do a slam poem without the SLAM?

That's part two.

Part three is even more nebulous. Spoken word with only words. Turned away from the audience. The writer detached from his writing, so the audience has no preconceived notions of what will be presented.

There's a part four bubbling around in there as well, but it's barely even coelesced into even a feeling.

(How can I explore this without ripping of Laurie Anderson?)

I do know that this is not something that's going away. These alien feelings are deeply connected to my experience after surgery last year. Turns out there's even a term for it- "Pumphead". And it's more common and serious than I knew at the time. Not that I really had much of a grasp on what was going on at the time, even after I thought I had recovered.

Maybe that's where the idea of non-existing words come from. Those times when I knew that what I was saying was not matching what I was thinking, and even worse, what I was thinking wasn't matching what was really happening.

I need to explore this.

Comments

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

This is extraordinarily interesting.

I thought at once of Dada, and that poem which is just gibberish, but is read out with tremendous, passionate anger, so you understand there's some meaning here, perhaps one which words can't convey. Maybe that's the point of Dada, idk. Wish I could remember which poem I'm talking about.

I want to know how Korean songs are stored in my brain. I understand only a tiny fraction of any given Kpop song: any English words - assuming I recognise them - and a handful of Korean words. Yet the sounds of the words and sentences are, in some way, perfectly familiar. The end of the second line of the middle eight of Lucifer sounds like "pool Danny pool". I just looked it up; it's budamil ppun, which is close enough to call a match. So the lyrics are being stored in that pudding in there as language, but meaningless language. (It's often an advantage that the emotional meaning is provided by the music. Sometimes I look up the words of some ravishing song and discover they're utterly banal.)

Nothing but immense sympathy on cognitive deficit, btw. If my conditions don't cause it, the bloody meds do!

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

I think you know where I'm coming from. It's somewhat like singing the words you think are song lyrics, only to find out years later they're something completely different, and now the original feel is gone, replaced by something new, familiar, but not.

[pryanik0.livejournal.com]

Доброе утро!) Удачного дня)

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[slomosexual.livejournal.com]

I think that sometimes meaning DOES INDEED distract from the experience & enjoyment of the poem. Not a lot, probably not even as much as it contributes, but wow I often want less meaning. Like, don't try to beat me over the head with the message; maybe I just want to feel a little wild. . .

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

I'm juggling how to do this without the nonsense words becoming a distraction as well; the listener concentrating on trying to understand the words and missing the meaning.

[slomosexual.livejournal.com]

Don't know if this will help, & I'm certainly not telling you to nab my schtick, but:

I once wrote a few narrative poems that had no verbs in them (no easy feat, I tell you). Anyway, whenever people read or heard them, they got the narrative but would often ask, "What is it about those poems that is so weird?"

I knew I was onto something ")