who do you scream?
screaming outside
someone is
screaming outside
how strange
to be
screaming
outside
when i scream
i scream
inside
i do not scream
outside
i can not scream
outside
how strange
to be
screaming
outside
how strange
to hear
screaming
outside
how strange
to hear
screaming
in my mind
out my mind
outside
screaming
out of sides
we’ve
run out of sides
we’ve
run back inside
back in
side
it’s safe
inside
quiet
my mind
back in
side
who’s on
your side
when you
scream in
side
scream out
side
scream
do i
scream
do i
scream
can i
please
scream
please
?
If the world exists as a shadow and scream, original sin, piecewise function, what ever could it mean? Etymonline is my second home, my words and their meanings are all I can know. Genealogy of reality, our world built on words, words that can bend and can break, words that must be heard – must be confirmed, my late bishop’s baptism served Eucharist pragmatism, if communion lies in the firmament, is screaming my new sacrament?
Etymonline tells me “scream”1 is of uncertain origin, similar to words like schreien, similar to words in German. Etymonline tells me this, it does not yell me this, it speaks to me, it does not scream to me, but it is scream to me, it tells about “scream” to me… does it “scream” to me, what does it tell me about “scream?”
Are those screams I hear outside, screams that scream what’s on my mind? Do I live with screams that scream, in real life what’s simply on my screen? Is there a sleepwalking scream, a seminar scream, a stupendous scream, dropped-my-ice-cream scream? Is there a solemn scream, sacred communion scream, venial reprieve scream, Peri Hypsos2 sublime scream? Is there an “I’m starting to think in screams” scream, an “I don’t even know what this means” scream, “what does it mean to think in screams” scream, “will anyone ever hear my screams” scream?
*
Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.3 The limits of my words define how much I could have felt. When I feel the primal urge to scream, is its locus some psychoanalytic dream? Screams escape from me, escape outside, how can I be sure they’re not simply residue of my mind? “By the means of the senses!” I mean I can hear them, right? but how can I escape the tremoring skeptic’s blight?!
I’d like to think I can scream, that “here’s proof I can make a sound” scream, the “of course life is as it seems” scream, the “not merely a simulation on the screen” scream. I’d like to think I am a scream, a sounding creature outside the world I dream, outside the words in my lexeme scream, that I may be a scream who screams “scream.” Sinews and skin and saccharine smiles scream, sardonic scleras smudged in sunsets scream, smoky shadows that shatter the sun scream, somber sounds that suffocate the shrill screams scream.
Why do you scream “sick, dude” to my elderly neighbor’s cat, dude, only to get a feline scowl back, dude, when I’ve been sick my whole life, dude, and I don’t have nine to scream back to you. Why do I scream for ice cream, you scream for ice cream, we all scream for ice cream, what even is this “I scream”? Do I scream, can I scream, how do I know I’m not stuck in a dream?
Why is a scream preferred to silence – that’s how you know they’re really upset. If silence smothers screaming anger, what does that say about one’s mindset - what can that say about one’s mindset, what can be heard without being said?
Is it really screaming outside, a someone screaming outside, a someone with meaning outside, a soulful screaming outside, schizophrenic screaming inside, sinister screaming death’s-bride, scream-stained scheming wild-eyed,“does anyone else hear the screaming?!” I cried. Did you hear screams outside? Were they real screams, outside, not just sweet dreams, tonight, not just your scheme, in mind, life as it seems, denied?
*
Seismic scream, subterranean, submarine scream and I’m vegetarian. Squeal, don’t scream, poultry’s egalitarian. I scream for ice cream only when it's Neapolitan, only when it’s Napoleon, Stalin’s totalitarian, I scream “no longer vegetarian!”
I’m a winter baby, been plotting since day one, a few hours old, flipped my parents off for fun. Seriously, we still have the photo, a slime-ball bundled up in snow, in snow-white blankets soft on baby’s skin, skin white like snow, my face, a ball of snow, my spirit’s Snowball, my plot only thickens, Napoleon has it all but does he live with the chickens?
Wednesday’s child is full of woe4, but I’m Tuesday’s child, deposited in the snow. Born in the Year of the Goat, could I be written in the stars as his forever scapegoat? One-hundred-fifteen years before, 1888 saw Van Gogh slice off his ear, and I wonder now if these outside screams he would hear.
One year later, Wittgenstein was born. He entered the ‘forms of life’5 that assimilate one to ‘universal’ norms. Which are we ‘initiated into,’ and is it possible that I could hear screaming that is not there, or that someone could scream and I could simply pause and stare? Injunctive upon injunctive, do I live in mere acknowledgement, the best we have to be of our lives almost half-confident? If I hear screaming outside could I really pause and stare, curiously impaired, pause and wonder, cruel and asunder, pause and pause and pause and… not react? What are my forms of life? Am I idiosyncratic, am I an idiot, an idiot-syn, an idiot who sins, who sins and sins and sins and… doesn’t react? Do I violate some fundamental human scream-pact?
Pact
Pact
Pact
Fundamental human scream-pact
human seem-pact
Life is as it seems-pact
We’re not stuck in a dream-pact
Or if we are at least it feels real-pact
But we’re probably not, don’t let it detract
From how you live your life, treat it as fact
I promise your scream will be heard and that I’ll react
You be you and I’ll be me even if genesis is an experimental scream-act.
Artist’s Statement
Imagine you’re screaming in public – maybe you’re just been injured and are in pain, you’ve just received supremely bad (or supremely good) news, are meeting a dear friend for the first time in years and are brimming over in anticipation and you’ve just spotted them in the airport, etc. You’d expect others to react around you, to rapidly look your way and check the reason for your outburst, come to your aid if you are, in fact, injured, etc. No biggie, it’s just human nature, right? But what if this didn’t happen, what if you were screaming and no one responded? You’re sure you’re screaming - I mean, you are making the noise, you can feel your larynx vibrate, and anyway you hear yourself (do you?) - but no one around you seems to notice anything amiss. It’s like you’re not even screaming. Some fundamental tenet of your personhood has been negated, and now you’re not even sure you’re screaming yourself. Do these screams simply live in your mind? Are you dreaming? Maybe your voice-box is broken, or something. ‘Oh no, solipsism is real and of course no one can hear me; they don’t exist! Only I do! At least, I can only be sure of my existence. To hell with everyone else! Not my problem!’ Except it is your problem; there’s a reason you’re screaming; your scream communicates something - your hurt, your excitement, your emotions, etc. It’s an external expression of your inner mental state. If you can’t communicate that, what can you do? Who are you? How can you be sure your loved ones know the real you - that you know the real you? Is there even a real you (is there even a ‘you’)? Your thoughts spiral, alienating you from the world, and you still haven’t solved the problem that your scream can’t be heard.
It’s the worst-case scenario: you’re all alone, the only person left on earth (these other ‘people’ clearly don’t count; they’re not reacting to your screams, so they’re obviously violating some fundamental human quality, one that it seems you alone possess… for good or for worse). Cut off from the rest of the world, what’s the point of anything at all? If you can’t communicate with others, how do you expect to communicate with yourself?
Such is the skeptic’s dilemma. The word “skeptic” is derived from the Greek skeptikos, meaning “inquiring, reflective” (told you Etymonline is my second home). Skepticism as a philosophical movement inquires into the nature of knowledge, questioning whether it is possible at all, or possible to our satisfaction. Can we ever really “know” something? To what extent? What do I mean when I say “I know…?” Is this the same way you use the word “know” when you say “I know…?” Do we mean the same thing when we make the declaration to “know” something? With roots in western antiquity that flower (perhaps even more so) in contemporary thought, perhaps the most prominent skeptics are Descartes (1596-1650) and Hume (1711-1776). With the modernist turn in the 18th century, skepticism took a more linguistic route, prodding the flimsy foundation of language and questioning whether we can, in fact, communicate our inner states at all.
Wittgenstein (1889–1951) is one of the key philosophers accredited with the development of a new method of philosophy, one that invokes logic in unprecedented, mathematical ways. Wittgenstein is most famous for his conception of “language games,” the idea that the meaning of a word cannot be detached from the ‘game’ it plays - from its context (he employs an idiosyncratically expansive definition of “grammar” to encompass both the word and its syntactical ‘game’). Words only ever ‘play games,’ but that’s just the nature of language - and we’re better off for it. It’s just a fact of life - a ‘form of life.’
Wittgensteinian linguistic philosophy as extended and interpreted by Stanley Cavell (1926-2018) presents a new definition of “knowledge” that seems to overcome the skeptic’s fundamental, self-spiraling question which alienates them from the world, and through this, from oneself: Cavell’s “truth of skepticism” is that knowledge should not be a knowledge with certainty, but as acknowledgement; certainty is too high a bar, one we’ll never achieve, but no matter! That's not the goal, anyway. Instead, acknowledgement reigns; you need not know with certainty that I am, in fact, screaming (or why I’m screaming); you simply need to acknowledge it, to turn my way and make sure I’m alright. And you’ll do this anyway, subconsciously come to another’s aid in need. This is a ‘form of life,’ to apply Wittgenstein’s term, one we all organically abide by. To acknowledge is to be human. Your acknowledgement of my screaming with some reaction - a snap of the head my way, maybe - confirms my immersion in the world, my ability to communicate with others (and thus with myself), the fact that no, I’m not going insane and yes, there are, in fact, real people (not merely automatons) who see the real me, or at least the me I really present to the real world.
Spurred by the skeptic’s seemingly infinite appetite to question knowledge all the more severely, this piece explores what would happen without acknowledgment, if these Wittgensteinian ‘forms of life’ and their Cavellean reprise fail, break down, somehow… would I fail? Would you? I mean, you’ve already failed to acknowledge me. Does this mean that you’ve also failed yourself - negated your personhood by denying me mine?
Some further reading –
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy [particularly Meditations 1 & 2], 1641
Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953
Cavell, The Claim of Reason, 1999