The Spoken Image

Fragments of metaphors

The Unpronounceable Psalm
By Nicholas Samaras

I couldn't wrap my mouth around the vowel of Your name.
Your name, a cave of blue wind that burrows and delves 
endlessly, that rings off the walls of my drumming, lilting heart, 
through the tiny pulsations of my wrists, the blood in my neck.
I couldn't hold the energy of Your name in my mouth 
that was like trying to utter the crackle of lightning, 
as if my teeth would break from its pronunciation.
I am dwarfed in the face of Your magnitude, 
O You whom I can't articulate. O You of fluency 
and eloquence whom I can't fully express, my words 
are only the echo of You that rings within my soul, my soul 
a cave of blue wind that houses the draft of You, 
the eternal vowel of You I can't wrap my mouth around.
Lord, Lord, as close as I may gather, as close as I may say.

The mouth is a cave. Maybe words are shadows cast from some light deep within us.

Ann Hamilton made a small pinhole camera that could fit in her mouth. Her lips were the shutter. Her mouth spoke images instead of words.

Face to Face 57, 2001
by Ann Hamilton

I have learned that the mouth is the shape of an eye.

Face to Face 9

In the artist’s own words:

I don’t go into the darkroom and load the film in my mouth and then come out and do it, so it is actually still an object that’s inserted into my mouth—but to have the orifice of the place where speech exits the body actually become the eye and to just play with that.

In the most wonderful way, it is a play on words. A way to wrap our mouths around the world as Samaras was getting at. The way an infant mouths everything. As if the whole world were an eternal vowel between the consonants of God’s name.

To take these photos Hamilton must stand face to face.

As long as her mouth is open, taking in light, she cannot speak. No Lord, Lord. Her mouth can wrap around a pinhole camera but that is about it.