Peroration
Horticulturally, we are encouraged to rewild our gardens and fields, dig up the lawns, sow wildflowers, to let our hedges go without haircuts and to encourage the bursting forth of colour and growth. So let's set our word gardens free too.
Did I really say, 'word gardens'? I'm so sorry.
But truly, let's reclaim the fun and frolic of language.
Let's release it from the lantern-jawed severity and affectless restraint, from
austere solemnity.
Here's to an individual way with language: embarrassing,
overdone, over seasoned, over spiced, borrowed, cannibalised, veneered,
finessed, faked and finagled as it may be.
Let there be freedom in your utterance and let there be
delight. Let there be textural pleasure. Let there be silken words and flinty
words and sodden speeches and soaking speeches, crackling utterance and
utterance that quivers and wobbles like rennet.
Let there be rapid firecracker phrases and words that ooze
like a lake of lava. Don't rein it in. Don't fear it. Don't believe it belongs
to anybody else.
Don't let anyone bully you into believing that there are
rules and secrets of grammar and verbal deployment to which you are not privy. Just
let the words fly from your lips and your pen. Make up silly nicknames for
those you love and those you despise. Devise nonsense words and mad melodious
mantras. Don't sing in the shower, try out accents, argots, nonsense, Tommy-rotten
gibberish.
Give your words rhythm and depth and height and silliness. Give
them filth and form and majestic stupidity. Mix the slangy with the grand, the
noble with the naughty.
Swear sweetly and curse caressingly. Truth is constructed,
aesthetes, teachers, through artifice.
We can believe in the truth of masks - reality cannot be
trusted, appearances can. Reality is shifting, obscure and unreliable. Building
palaces of gorgeous, coloured words is an act of belief, a gift that proclaims
us all worthy of palaces.
Towers of grey breeze-block words, insult our capacity for
language and deny us the thrones in the realm of language that are our
birthright.
Demagogues use words to blame, enrage, divide and inflame. Can
we not venture to use them to enchant, connect, solace and inspire?
Words are free and all words, light and frothy, dour and
dappled, firm and sculpted as they may be, bear the history of their passage
from lip to lip over thousands of years. Words are weaponry and witchcraft.
They are pedigrees and passports, crowns and costume, and
they are ours.
Succumb to their lure. Buff their current dullness to a
dazzling new shine, sheen and gleam.
Play gracefully, disport yourselves disgracefully and make Oscar
proud.
Thank you.
Full lecture here:
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