A FFFFrictative does what it means.
Place your upper teeth
gently
on your upper lip.
Hard teeth,
soft flesh,
flirting together in the feathery flow of air.
With bi-labial PPPPlosives,
lip meets lip,
puffing air with punching impact.
The mortal enemy of candles and microphones.
Meanwhile SSSSibillances escape
between tongue and teeth
who don't quite dare to meet.
Words are formed on the surfaces of mouths.
Lips, tongue, teeth, palate,
in collisions and caresses,
rubbings and raspings,
touchings and tastings.
From the relations of these surfaces
things are represented in sounds
that come to sing the things.
It is from surfaces speaking
that we can speak of surfaces.
* * *
If you haven't guessed already, the accompanying sound piece uses only the consonant sounds of the above text. This approach was inspired by the fact that it was not until the Ancient Greeks that vowels were introduced into the written alphabet. The previous Semitic alphabet had consonants with some semi-vowels, but vowels themselves were ascertained through context. Walter Ong, citing classicist Eric A. Havelock, says that the introduction of vowels indicates a new level of “abstract analytic, visual coding of the elusive world of sound” (2005, p. 28). Havelock extrapolates that this lays the groundwork for the further achievements of abstract and conceptual thought that the Greeks were to develop.
This makes me wonder—if vowels are abstractions, are consonants then concrete figurations?
References
Ong, W. J. (2005). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word . Taylor & Francis. (Original work published 1982).