Words, they are slippery things. And don’t get me started on the sounds they make! (Wait, do words even make sounds? Or do sounds make words?). Phonetics or Phonology? Or both! Anyway, some sounds seem to appear out of nowhere when certain words are pronounced. Listen to that linking or intrusive ‘r’. (Hold Me Farst!).
I’m just a library’s ghost, but where I haunt these days I hear so many conversations about the production and perception of spoken words. Given I flit between the written word day in, day out, I appreciate these conversations, not least because they originate from the partner of my old librarian, and she is a linguist, so she really knows what she is talking about (including how we talk in general, down to the waveform). There is more than minimal contrast between the two of them and I wouldn’t call them a minimal pair, but I still must stress that they have a shared faith in moras.
It is her birthday today and so I wanted to offer her something suitable for her love of words and their sounds. As I had him flip through Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 (Primary Information: Brooklyn, 2020) last night by the light of the candle you gave him on your recent anniversary.
I liked the idea of choosing something from the year of your birth (1978).
First there was RUINDOORRURUÍDO (1978) by Brazilian artist Leonora de Barros, which made a noise that sounded promising:
Then there was the mercurial Italian artist Tomaso Binga’s Dattilocodice (1978) that had a nice ring to it:
I wasn’t sure where the words were in Polish artist Marzenna Kosińska’s Od-do, zegar-obiekt (1978):
But I knew I had found what I was looking for when I saw Serbian-Hungarian artist (and documenta 14 participant) Katalin Ladik’s Wildflowers (1978) – Rebeka, here’s a close-up, just for you!
