Here is a new route that my love of writing is getting channeled into. I realized that there are a lot of beautiful things that I end up reading and instead of adding words to words it is sometimes better to add pictures (and feelings) to words. So I challenged myself to put together this one page comic using some constraints.
Watching Kon-Tiki a few months back I was mesmerized by the leap of faith taken by Thor Heyerdahl and his team. It is one thing to sail 4300 miles on a raft but totally another to stick to only primitive methods to build one.
The principle of primitive man was not to fight against nature but to adapt himself to it. - Thor Heyerdahl
Thor and his team apparently did not entirely grasp the pros and cons of the primitively built raft they had all risked their lives upon. They had simply trusted their findings and the ocean in front of them. They had trusted that things done in accordance with nature, as the primitive man had done, will allow them to sail far.
Humans are part of the continuum of nature. In its cosmic design we are born, we operate and we go to nothingness. To live harmoniously is to listen and understand the workings of nature. To allow it the upper hand and operate with its flow and its force.
Life is most skillfully lived when one sails a boat rather than rowing it. It’s more intelligent to sail than to row. With oars I have to use my muscles and my effort to drag myself along the water. But with a sail, I let the wind do the work for me. - Alan Watts
Yet, often, we try to use our mind to win against nature. Instead of respecting the mountain in front of us and asking for its blessings for safe passage, we brashly declare using our juvenile vigor that we will surpass it.
Sooner or later, if we are spared complete disintegration in the face of such follies, we are humbled to realize. We cannot fight against nature and live long. We always have to adapt ourselves. We have to pluck the misgivings of our thought dominated being from speaking before listening to what nature has to say. Nature is way bigger than us. Or rather, we are an indivisible part of nature. Fighting nature is fighting ourselves.
Updated: Jan 17
Ever looked at a word and said it one too many times till it shed its meaning and became just a sound? What does it make you feel? That sound?
The sound of the word is a realm of its own. Anyone who delves into more than one language or seeks comfort in wordless songs can attest it.
Language is constrained with its function of communication. Words roll off our tongues and we assume that they are being communicated, almost as if in print. Thankfully they have sound to assist what is actually being said. Sounds of a familiar language are vibrations of familiarity, sounds of a familiar accent are too. They can make us feel home or they can create discord. Sound is primal in comparison to spoken language, it is the fabric on which language sits and often slides around. While our conscious deifies language our sub-conscious often defies it. Language makes you think, sound makes you feel and you always feel faster than you can think.
The languages we use carve us with the vibrations of their sounds.
Vibration is a kind of sense like touching from a distance - Dr.John Levack Drever
Our ear drums are being touched by sound every living moment. Words that caress, words that explode and everything in between with their various intonations, colors and flavors. Songs, music, words and sounds that have departed the narrow grip of meaning can enter a space deep inside us and shine a light on the primal areas of our being. They can salve the sub-conscious to which our ordered structures of meaning cannot reach.
A video essay on Sigur Ros using their famed Hopelandic and what they are trying to do with the sound of words.