The Language Paper

Language is one of the most powerful mediums in the human world, and not only can language be expressed through words, but also visually and musically. Language is everything from words that are spoken and the silence that lies between one phrase and the next. I find out odd how in our culture, we try to label things black and white. It’s either this or it’s that, yet when there’s something lacking in language, we try to assign colors to it instead of letting things be how they are. I have two types of mediums that I feel shows the idea that things are visually and audibly black and white, but it’s difficult to leave it at that.

The first medium I chose is in fact a color picture, but what makes it similar to a black and white picture is that there’s mostly black in the picture. When my dad got the roll of film developed, I started looking through it and not even stopping to look closely at any pictures, but then I get to this one and I found myself just staring at it and looking for something that might not even be there. When I first glanced at it I just saw a person wearing black and their arm with her head not captured in the picture. When I looked at it again I saw myself in the background with a look of distress and sadness incorporated with the look of reality finally setting in. I think the reason that I didn’t quite look at myself in the background first was because I’m positioned off center in the picture. I look carefully to see body language, since I can’t tell what words are being spoken, and I see that my hands are by my mouth, almost seeming like I want to hide my emotions from the world, but at the same time I’m overwhelmed with the emotions that I feel that I can’t help but break down in silence. The second thing that my eyes seem to land on is the person to the right holding the other person’s hand. I somehow got a flash as to why I started crying again. It’s not because it was a funeral and that my lifeless grandmother’s body was right there in the open, but it’s that the person who is standing to the right of me (my aunt), is holding the other’s persons hand (her aunt, my grandmother’s sister). I remember taking one quick glance at her and just seeing my grandmother in front of me because of the close resemblance of the two. It was almost like a walking ghost was right in front of me. That’s when reality set in and I realize she’s never coming back, and I’ll never be able to see her smile or hear her voice. I must have spent a total of 10 minutes looking at that picture, even though there isn’t much to it. Even though it is a color picture, there isn’t too much color associated with it. The overall language that I get from this picture is pain. This is a really difficult picture to talk about especially because it’s a picture of me, but I think it became easier to talk about it and its language because I didn’t remember when the picture was taken. I also asked a few of my peers to give me their overall impression of the picture and it was exactly the same as my impression of the picture. They glanced at it then glanced at it again, noticing me off center. Then they spent a few good moments looking at my expression and body language.

The second medium that I chose is a song by Sarah McLachlan. The song is called “Angel”. It is a fairly simple song consisting of only a piano and her singing. There is no real intricate beats or rhythms, and the song is really clear. Anytime I listen to it, I have to listen to it maybe three or four times just to get the feel of it. I would categorize this song as black and white, but I find myself trying to assign colors to the song, as well as texture and smell. From listening to the song, I get the image of a rainy day towards the beginning, then the rainy day gradually