i started this morning with your pain-study (I have not read/viewed all yet!!). Thank you so much for sharing, there is much in it that connects with me in different ways. First I just note:
The images of Joyful Pain ! (no words to explain)
Then I thought about Pain as Temporal Phenomenon. For me, pain is very much time. Pain as a special place within time. There is a Swedish word “undantagstillstånd” : when I try to translate to English, is says “state of emergency” which does not feel like what I want to say. “undantag” = exception. “tillstånd” = (in this context) situation/ish… (can also mean permission). For me it means a gap in time, a time and place that cannot exist outside of itself. Pain is like this, sort of, sometimes. I think of the time I have spent in hospitals, as undantagstillstånd, they require a language and a pace and a gaze and a feeling, that cannot exist outside, it doesn’t make sense (and it doesn’t make sense inside either but there it is permitted to do other things) and the only way to talk about it is making a joke… or it becomes a fetish, or banal, or cliché and I feel when talking about it like my whole being is reduced to this gap in reality which is absurd in a not-so-good-way. I also think about acute physical pain. When in hospital I was force fed through my nose, when they placed the tube (?) in my nose it was so much pain, it took an hour (I have heard that it usually isn’t that difficult to do) and that hour is also a special time. In that hour all other time ceased to exist. I once said to a friend who studied to become a nurse, that all nurses who will work with this should experience it themselves, because I felt that pain as a knowledge. I don’t know if I agree with myself anymore, but I think of what you say about pain as knowledge. Also, I had tooth braces (?) as a teenager, and I played the flute. Having the flute at my mouth meant my lip was pierced by the metal braces, so after every session of music my mouth was full of blood and the pain was terrible (and so was the sound of the music maybe…). So my feeling of pain is also that of trying to create music.
Even though I have experienced a lot pain after this, these are the moments of pain that sort of shapes my formulation of pain, I think.
I also thought about this (quote):
“Dr. Sator emphasised the constructive character of pain, and its quality to demand an attribution of meaning. Pain, she argued, is a communicative, interactive, culturally and socially influenced phenomenon. It is constructed in social situations, in talking about it with peers, family members, doctors, etc. It is while talking that meaning is attributed — which, to her judgement, is thecentral aspect of pain.”
This thing about communication.
I just wrote the other day with an autistic friend about language and/vs communication. About feeling that language requires co-existence. Language and I : it’s a relationship, not a tool-user, but a co-existence. The problem is when language is used as communication. And I use it as communication, and I am forced to, and I feel so much…
And there is this idea of illness as communication. Which often confuses me and makes me angry, I think. Illness, and body, as communication. And that is some bodies.
And then I think of animals, and the idea of suffering as a limit for living, and my fear of hurting other beings (mostly non-human).
And words for pain. (Swedish: pain = smärta // ärta = pea // hjärta = heart)
And now i am a bit overwhelmed I think.
it is great that my pain categories make sense to you. I find your thoughts on pain very interesting & touching at the same time (I was deeply moved by the part were you describe your feelings during the application of the tube in your nose).
For me, also time in hospital is not usual time, and I can very much relate to your describing it as a gap in reality, and as something absurd.
There is pain throughout the time spent in hospital, due to being a prisoner of the "hospital system" (with its structure, its fixed daily routines) & at the mercy of the medical staff, due to being deprived of one's individuality (most of it), and one's privacy (all of it). Yes, it is undantagstillstånd - the German translation is Notstand, combining Not - distress, hardship, affliction, and Stand - status, state, standing; so it means a state of distress, or standing in the middle of hardship; maybe it is nearer to the swedish undantagstillstånd
I have an obsession with words, with some words, sometimes, especially nouns, and then - of course everyone uses those words, but can I have them just for myself? Words like Gletscher (glacier), or Beton (concrete), in particular words that start with G or B (...)
When I enter the garden, which is more a piece of wilderness next to the house (with the bird-infrastructure that I already described), I tend to whistle - not with the intention to imitate the sounds of the birds - it is something spontaneous, motivated by the impulse to signal to them: I am different, yes, but not all different - we can relate ...
... märta ist near to Schmerz, the German word for pain, and Schmerz is also close to Herz, which means heart, hjärta.
I think this relation might be important, and is missing in English, the connection between pain and the heart.
To work on pain together would also be very interesting and a big project; pain words, pain language, animals & pain; it is something we could also pursuit.
Thank you for sharing the horse-exposition! As horses are animals I feel positive towards them, but I had troubles with the motif: girls and horses, because the horse girls I knew (from school times) were snobbish, or at least I thought that they were uppish, superficial etc.; a lot of prejudices on my side, evidently. So it was good for me to get involved with the subject in a new way, under your perspective - and I appreciate it very much. I think I get it now, the themes involved, the connection to another species, the motif of resistance, of love; and that being a horse girl includes the wish "to get out of one’s own body, to become something more, to connect with another body. To change, to be more a horse then a girl." I know V. Despret, she is a very interesting philospher; some time ago I read her essay on "der Kluge Hans", clever Hans, this was the horse that became famous for being able to count, and then was "disenchanted" - I liked her interpretation very much: that it wasn't about the mathematical ability or inability of the horse, but about the special relation between the horse and the human trainer, and, most of all, about the ability of the horse to read the human.
I was thinking now about german-swedish language as sometimes more connected than english. I know a bit of german, i have studies it and i very much like to read in german, but my writing and speaking is terrible. There is also something with pain and the german language, for me, i think... like the sound of the language conveys pain with... i don’t know, sound... like Schmerz. It’s something with the sch-sound that is both painful and comforting, i think of the silencing sound schhhhh... as silencing but also comforting: as “don’t speak!” and as “no need to speak”.
And: Fisch. The sound of the german Fisch. I also very much like the german writings of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan.
I very much recognize the obsession with words. One word that i especially like in translation is “skymning” – english “dusk”, that one is not my favourite, but german Dämmerung, danish skumring, french crépuscule. I like the travelling of the trans-lation and the phenomenon is not so important, but the word.
Yes! I would love working on pain-animals-pain-language!
Horses are much pain, for me. Fear of hurting the horse, being forced to hurt the horse, being hurt by the horse. And yes, i think part of my horse-passion comes from fear of horse girls as well as love for horses and horse girls, and the snobbishness for me is something i know of but that was also absent from the horse girls i knew, and i love the different horse-human-worlds that exist in the world...
True, Fisch is a good word, Fisch und Vogel - yes, let's also do the animal-pain-language thing; die Schmerz-Tiere (I suddenly remember one of my collages you might like, with a joyful pain fish) und die Schmerzsprache, the hurting words - words that hurt and at the same time it could mean: inflicting pain on words, damaging them.
In my pain study I quote E. Scarry, she wrote an influential book on pain (the body in pain) where she says that pain destroys language; I think this is a good starting point or point of contention; like: what remains then; and what is it with the utterances of pain - that bring us closer to the animal language as I suggest - the shrieks, the sounds of agony. We understand it; all animals understand it.
I once showed an installation consisting of a staple of pages covered with these utterances; I used an old mechanical typewriter for its production - hammering the AAAAHHHs, AUUUUs etc. into the paper was in itself therapeutic.
ps_ I just noticed: beast is also near to barb;
and about Anna – Na is a colloquial German expression for Nein = no, while an is a prefix expressing an approach, like coming towards something, connecting (an-kommen, an-binden etc.), and then there is this wonderful hummingbird called Annakolibri (Calypte anna) ...