literature

the shape of speech

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Lychalis's avatar
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Literature Text

I’ve often thought that communication is like water: our conversations flow like a river, carving its way through the landscape of human experience. It’s full of changes that jolt the flow - currents and eddies. Beneath the surface, agendas and emotions cloud the water - sediment and stones. One thing I’ve recently wondered: if that’s the case, then what’s the shape of speech?

“Constant stars, in them I read such art
as truth and beauty shall together thrive.”


It had been a long time since I’d last formed the words, reading aloud on my boyhood bed. My eyes were wistful as I watched our candidate, our front-of-house in the latest presidential race work her way through the campaign speech. Today the focus was on rising poverty, on reducing the cost of living. I’d agonised over this point a few nights back when I was writing the damn thing. It sounded so naive the idea seemed impossible, but maybe she’d find a way once in the Oval Office. Even so, it was on the manifesto so I couldn’t just leave it out.

Listening to her read it out, eyes bright and confident, full of purpose, I felt elated. The flow of the speech was smooth and pleasant to hear. It lacked the grace of a Shakespearean sonnet, but I’d made sure the spoken river ran free and clear of jolts. There was more to a good speech than that, but in my mind, it helped.

My blonde haired friend and colleague nudged me. “If you’re done being all poetic and shit. I think Ric’s looking for you.”

I looked over and centred my gaze on his slightly bent nose. His voice was like a stream that bubbled over rocks, soothing in sound but turbulent and confused. It lacked the power to carve - this mattered little. “Sure. Everyone still on for the weekend?”

My stream-voiced friend sipped his coffee, the black, bitter liquid sputtering through his teeth in a quiet hiss. “Pretty much. Still waiting on Jackie, though.” A few minute droplets fell on the sleeve of his shirt, rolled up, as usual, to the elbows. He was an active sort.

I finished the last of my rice and made for the door. “She won’t commit until the day before. You might need to work on assumptions.” It occurred to me then, the individualistic and living nature of speech. Thrown into the river of communication and conversation, there was nothing else it could be other than fish. Fish, with their dark eyes and swift tails, drifting and dashing through the sediment and stones, navigating the current.

When the tumult of emotion brought down boulders and debris, the fish of speech is destined to either nip deftly through or be crushed under floods of paroxysm.

Yes, it could only be fish. That, or some kind of boat.

So what would that make me? Perhaps a minnow - something small, barely seen I weave my way through the riverbed storm. Our determined candidate had more power in navigating communicative flow. I saw her as something like a pike, predatory and strong. My friend was almost certainly a salmon, fighting against the current in the autumn run.

My mind returned to Shakespeare and I wondered if he’d drawn from all these qualities of speech when writing his plays, seeing the chaos and confusion but trying to find a flow all the same. He found stories in history and retold them in his present, speaking through the nib of his pen and sometimes through the mouths of actors. He spoke to his peers and left a lasting imprint. What fish might he have been? Maybe he was closer to a rowboat, as his navigation would be constant, not just going with the flow.

“Its end is truth and beauty’s doom and date.”


Maybe all writers are sailors in this river. Even so, I struggle to see myself as anything more than a swimmer, a flash of scales flaring briefly in the mud.
:iconflashfictionmonth:

Woohoo! My first entry to the :iconflash-fic-month: gods! My 'challenge' was "Shakespearean and a presidential character". I took that as, obsessing over Shakespearean language in the mind of a speechwriter for a presidential candidate. Took a while to hammer down, but it was fun!

I really should have typed this up earlier. It's gone 3am right now. Oh well!

 
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ilyilaice's avatar
Really well written and thought-provoking. Whoa. :wow: