Dead Language

In the hours to days to weeks to months that followed Renee Good’s murder, I was beset by an emetic intolerance for words newly written or spoken about the American situation, even those that came from pacifists, Marxists, anarchists, decent people of whatever professed ideology who spoke in anger and anguish. All expressions felt the same: like ash. Factual truth did not give the circulating phrases power or meaning, nor did a speaker’s emotional sincerity, because the words I encountered were not in touch with these sources. They may have been, once, but the vibrant, almost vascular process that occasioned their creation was not active anymore. Now, they were secular catechisms, repeated with an attachment that facilitates detachment, the energetic evacuation that comes with retreat into familiarity. It was sloganeering, even when wordsmithed into ostensibly original speech.

This condition was not confined to the internet. In Quaker meetings, people stood and recited the inescapable truisms, too. Here was someone to say people only care about Good’s murder because she’s white. And someone to say this is Trump’s America. Someone else had to say Biden was a genocidaire just like Trump, and what about Gaza, Sudan, the lives outside of America taken by America. Another person had to say they thought the murdering ICE agent had trauma from his time in war, and another had to answer that his trauma was irrelevant, he was chasing a fat paycheck without remorse. Someone had to implore everyone else in gentle, careful, Quakerish terms, to please, please, be quiet; this was not the spirit of worship; we need silence.

My own obsessive thoughts were questions. Who were these words spoken for, and why? What were they meant to achieve and did they achieve it? Blame and despair and rage lay very heavy, and I saw no evidence of these words transforming or lifting or shifting it. I agreed with the final Quaker: true silence, the listening silence, a silence of complete presence, was worth giving a chance. To be with each other, not speaking, might manage a little of what incessant talking could not.

Language had gone dead like a battery or (better) a plant: desiccated and brown yet still composed, holding onto its shape without receiving sustenance. Because the words were as empty as hollow reeds, when they punctured one’s consciousness they drained out sensitivity, clarity, faith in others, faith in self. I felt this lessening in the true sense of the verb, as an embodied experience. And I knew other people were undergoing the same, probably—or especially—the people speaking. “The right language starts to feel dead,” says the poet Ariana Reines. “Language is alive [but] we’re not taught about language this way. We’re not taught that it’s actually living.” Phenomena can’t be cut off from process, from receiving, if they are to stay alive. You can’t take from something that’s never replenished, or rather you can’t take from it for very long.

William C. Anderson said something similar while speaking about Buddhism late last year: “When you’re dealing with dogma, those phrases and terms that you use, they become dead… So many of the words, so many of the questions, so much of the rhetoric that we have…is already dead and it’s already worthless.” He adds that the same happens in political contexts; words like “solidarity” and “mutual aid” and “liberation” lose their impact. That loss occurs in communication between people, but the impact dulls in one’s brain, too. Thinking becomes stagnant. Here is Ariana Reines again: “Language very quickly becomes a tool for foreclosing upon possibility and expansion…it also forecloses thought and actually stops intimacy very easily.”

I don’t want more dead material poured into the pool of my mind, or careless hands stirring up the old muck. I don’t want to be in spaces on or offline where agitating our fetid little ponds is all we do to each other. I want filtration, fresh rain, sunlight. I would like for someone’s hand to scoop out a bit of my debris. I would like to be that hand for someone else.

Our habits tend to set us up for failure—our habits of speaking, of not listening or listening poorly and not thinking or thinking poorly. And our habits of unregulated reaction. I’ve said plenty of lazy things I don’t really mean, in person and online, when I found myself confronted with a topic I resent. Two recent occasions come to mind, once with my husband and once with my mother, when my words came out of an ever-present hostility badly articulated, one about people in general and one about cops. Blurting out an intense, cynical non sequitur is not beneficial to anyone. It’s a discredit to myself and it doesn’t give my family the attention and respect they deserve. I was just so angry and tired of having these weights in my heart. There’s an assumption that venting is synonymous with unburdening but I didn’t feel better after, obviously. When it comes to a speaker’s experience of relief, the details of their speech matter—when, where, how it takes place, and who hears it.

There are so many ways to listen, speak, write, and be quiet. I mean that truly; these ways are distinct and real. There is being silent with yourself; silent with people you care about; silent with strangers. Each has a different effect. There is writing and thinking done entirely on your own, and there is art and thought you send out into the world for the eyes and ears of strangers. These aren’t meant to be the same. Some thoughts are best explored and developed through exchange with those you trust like teachers, friends, colleagues, anyone who can give you grace, listen in good faith, say your thoughts back to you, add from their own informed perspective. But not every verbalization needs push back or even acknowledgment. In 2023, as part of Plum Village’s climate course, I did an exercise in which we broke into small, random groups, and were given a big chunk of time in which each person could speak. No one had to speak, it was merely encouraged. The only rules were that we couldn’t say anything about what other people said. Anything! No “that sounds awful.” No “I’m in a similar situation.” No “that reminds me.” And after each person spoke, we had to take a few minutes of silence to let what they said settle. There are people who only felt comfortable sharing under these conditions. They wanted to say something specific and they wanted other people to hear it. That was a complete, valuable experience for them, without the sympathy or advice or assent that might normally go along with it.

We suffer if we don’t practice a variety of communion and communication, particularly if we do too much of one and none of the others. Everyone goes to whatever feels safest and easiest and most available, whether that’s silence or speech or certain units of speech. Most people at the Quaker meeting won’t say a word during worship and I bet many of them have had beautiful reflections to share. Meanwhile, some men speak frequently, a claim I base on the fact that while I don’t go every Sunday, I’ve heard these men many times. I wish they would become curious about what would happen, or simply what it would feel like inside themselves, if they didn’t say anything for four weeks in a row, or maybe six or eight. A somewhat awful yoga teacher of mine once said something profound and hilarious: “It can be very interesting to have something important to say and not say it.” He just wanted us to shut up, but he was right. To recognize what you as an individual are lacking requires determined self-awareness and, like I said, the cultivation of curiosity. Without curiosity, the challenge of going against your instincts is too great to sustain for very long.

Buddhists and Quakers have a lot of overlap, it seems to me, in their deep fascination with and prioritization of silence. They articulate it differently and practice it differently, but the commonalities are there. I’m putting this simplistically because there’s much too much to be said and I’m probably (attempting self-awareness here) not the right one to say it. But even in my limited experience, I know it is astounding—life-changing, genuinely—what can come out of mostly silent gatherings. Being with other people this way is precious. And what it does to language is a dimension of that. I’ve heard things in a Quaker meeting that I don’t think I’ll forget for the rest of my life.

As usual, everything is Ecclesiastes. Sometimes silence is cowardice and complicity, and sometimes anything other than silence is destructive noise. You need honesty, discernment, and other people’s help to have a hope of navigating this, to keep your words and thoughts dynamic. Because of meetings like the aforementioned one in which outrage and emotional confusion could not be contained, the capital-m Meeting now offers an additional weekly gathering where people are more free to speak—”worship sharing” vs. worship. “In community, we are responsible,” the email announcement explained, for making sure everyone receives what they need, for not precluding silence and also not forcing it. “It is a gift we can give one another.”