Writing in the airport, alarm, flashing lights.

[Alan Sondheim]

Writing in the airport, alarm, flashing lights.


What happens in relation to language and codework vis-a-vis glossolalia?
mantra?

In mantra, language is performative by virtue of repetition; in glossso-
lalia, language is excess and testimony. Both are dependent on the aural
register; mantra is steered through texts as well.

In both, sound is empathetic within and without the imminency of the
world. In both, the performance of natural language is negated, 'nonsense'
words on the edge of interpretation.

The mantra appears unconstructed, present and presencing: 'So much for the
believer's explanation of the origin of _mantra_ - its construction as a
verbal sound cannot interest him; on the contrary, he must deny the very
possibility of its having been "constructed" at any time - for being
eternal and only revealed in time, "construction" is precluded.' (Bharati)
Glossolalia likewise is unconstructed, albeit susceptible to linguistico-
archaeological renderings of ancient or at least ulterior fragmentary
texts.

If code is the asymptotic well-formed performative language, codework is
the deconstruction of that language within or corroding by or corroding
natural language. If code is entirely construct, codework is the splay of
mantra-glossolalia across its semantics. Codework has an uncanny relation-
ship with language and code; its sound is always distanced, almost
inaudible. Do not _think_ (of a) mantra; do not _think_ glossolalia. This
preclusion of thought is the preclusion of ration, rationality - in other
words conventional syntax. When syntax is cleared, the aural field
emerges.

This tendency towards the uncanny is also found in codework's relation to
the semantic or referential field. Codework threatens its own referents
_qua_ referents; in this respect it is liminal, although liminal _among_
what? - is part of its (fluid) content.

Alarms are going off in the airport. There are flashing lights.

In Echolalias, Heller-Roazen describes Trubetskoi's analysis of interjec-
tions; Trubetskoi pointed out that the interjective phoneme set contains
numerous sounds not found within the standardized language. In English for
example, grrr, hmmm, brrr, the glottal stop in uh-oh, etc. Might one
consider this real world interference, code abandoning normative phonemic
structures? Code is related to the _cry of pain,_ the inability to retain
meaning in the face of it, Levinasian alterity consumed in the Deleuzian
pli short-circuiting the body. For that matter, Levinas' Existence and
Existents describes insomnia's relation to decathecting, being, if I'm not
mistaken. Code ruptures, loosens meaning; it might be language wounded,
language not on its own, returned to the bodies that produced 'it.'


Echolalias, On the Forgetting of Language, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Zone,
2005 and The Tantric Tradition, Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition,
Anchor, 1970