The Spoken Word
Is this medium sufficient for the message? Can writing ever substitute for the rich nuance conveyed by tone of voice and poetic cadence of the spoken word?
“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future” — Marshall McLuhan
In the beginning, we dreamed. We hunted, we gathered, we howled, we danced. All joy and all fear was displayed without need for explanation. All thoughts were constrained within, having no means for release.
At the dawn of human awareness, while huddled around campfires, fleeting images flickered through memories, like ghostly shadows upon rock walls. Vocal sounds emerged to symbolize the objects of our experience, forging a new way to share our vague notions. Very gradually, over ages and ages, we learned to illustrate our visions and reveal our intentions.
Mythologies arose as the stories were told, like fairy tales and rhymes, carried by re-enactment and song through generations of time. These narratives were etched into a cohesive social consciousness, defining civil ethics, morality, and aspirations.
Rhapsodes were the specialized performers of epic poetry, the original rappers of classical Greece. They memorialized his-stories of the urban legends and the gods, giving voice to the cultural icons who would not be forgotten. Best known among them is Homer, and the epic verses he compiled.
Alexander the Great, 356–323 BCE, was tutored by Aristotle until age 16, then slept with a manuscript of ‘The Iliad’ for inspiration, while he collected the most expansive array of kingdoms on earth. He was a visionary leader, adaptable to cultural diversity, but captured by myth, his personal Achilles’ heel. As legends offered more than one example of divine status acquired by heroic achievement, Alexander adopted the belief that he could be godlike. Not all were equally persuaded by the poets in this matter.
Verse, spoken aloud, conveys a more powerfully evocative understanding of the culture and environment which they describe than is possible on the written page, as demonstrated by performers in the video linked below. Skilled actors contribute an interpretive element that we are wired to comprehend more immediately than when required to process language through a textual medium. The most essential requirement for communication is to capture and hold the listener’s attention, better achieved for some purposes by images, actions, or skillful vocal delivery.
Performance of dramatic comedy and tragedy was carried forward through Greco-Roman tradition and beyond over the next three thousand years. It evolved for entertainment but served the more significant result of promoting civil narratives for public emulation. Competing morality tales, delivered by folk lyrics and verse, worked to unite societies under a shared cultural vision. In an era when literacy was rare, people mainly obtained information and instruction from preachers of parables, street minstrels, and stage drama. These were the sole media for mass messaging.
Blossoming during a period we now call the Renaissance, was a broadening global awareness. Brought about by trade with distant civilizations, primarily advancements imported from the Far East, western knowledge became more sophisticated. Thanks to the printing press, it could now spread to the general populace and beyond the control of religious clerics.
No better representation of literary progress exists than in poetic sonnets produced by the English playwright known as ‘The Bard’. William Shakespeare excelled at creating a language of metaphor to convey the complexity of the human condition. He characterized acts of ambition, corruption, love and deception; conflicts of good and evil, order and disorder, appearance and reality; creating original phrases previously unspoken.
Countless poetic practitioners cross-pollinate expressive language over time. Literary history traces the paths of influence between the various attempts by wordsmiths to transcend the prosaic. Most often we try to absorb these efforts by reading from the written page, but still discover that words gain impact when delivered by voice of a poet.
Strenuously though we endeavor to lift ourselves from the quagmire of violence and greed, a repeated theme throughout history, humanity seems to continue a descent into decadence. The 20th Century ‘Wasteland’ described by TS Eliot testifies to our lack of contemporary progress, following warfare, with homage to both Homer and Shakespeare for the literary shoulders upon which we all stand.
Cultural narratives embodied within diverse dialects of communication are a mnemonic human tradition around the globe. All peoples wade in a stream of consciousness extending through time and beyond borders or nationalities. Our beliefs reside in the words, the terms, the expressions that permeate our ways of thinking.
Yet there is hope. Expressed in the aspirational language of great orators like Martin Luther King. Expressed in the questioning lyrics of minstrels like Bob Dylan. Expressed in the multi-faceted meanings of urban rap rhyme and slam poetry performance by contemporary artists.
The relevance of printed text in promoting collective action is questionable, as mental attention spans are so distracted. Perhaps our greatest hope, maybe a final chance, is in the gift handed down through the ages for humanity. Witness the uplifting power of the spoken word, as exemplified by Amanda Gorman’s ‘Earthrise’, offering innocent promise that civilization may endure.
