RAT More on Words

[Tkpshumka@aol.com]

J. Jones:

Excuse the delay in responding to your comments (I moved). I appreciate your 
thoughts and arguments, and have further enjoyed others' comments as well. 
Unfortunately, I do don't have the time to respond fully to your last entry, 
but I do wish to briefly clarify the use of the word "terror" in my first 
exchange. I was referring to the quote by Bogart and her inclusion of this 
word as representing an attempt to affect the audience by presenting the 
unexpected, thereby creating a state of "unbalance" which can both confusing 
and frightening. I do not mean using scare tactics like a horror flick, but 
rather, purposely attempting to inject "chaos" - "randomness" - bypass the 
logical, the expected, the intellectual, and affect one on a gut level 
(though even such fool-hearty attempts become dissected and categorized to 
represent some kind of meaning so that our minds can make "sense" of it, 
thereby defeating the whole purpose). Language can be a protective device 
from which to separate oneself from the immediate "feeling" (dare we use that 
word), and thereby remain detached, safely protected in the "higher" 
intellectual functions.

This is not to say that language is not important, nor that it has beauty and 
power. Only that, in the three dimensional forum of live performance, 
language is only one of the many elements through which we communciate, and 
in my experience, often the weakest. 

There's more to say (and ponder) on this, but I must go. I look forward to 
your comments, as well as to all others.

Tanya Kane-Parry
Shumka (location undetermined)