As a dramatherapist, I feel my way through life. Sometimes, most times, so many aspects of living are beyond words, and my work asks me to intuite what might be going on for my clients, some of whom are non-verbal. Non-verbal. Without words. But not without feeling or expression. Words can get in the way of what we really mean, but communication, a flow back and forth between people, that is essential. That is the core. A look; a smile; a nod of understanding; mirroring of body movements or actions to show you see one another, appreciate and care for one another, all feed our spirit. And equally, a grimace, scowl, cold stare or freeze-out communicate just as strongly and mark boundaries. These can also stop us in our tracks and mortify. All without words. Feeling comes from my solar plexus area, or my heart. It's quick-fire and lets me know what to do next when I'm working with someone, or when I'm living my life. Yes it can be wrong, this intuition, but so can words. And I love words, yet they falter for me often, or I falter in using them when I'm in the grip of something ethereal, which life is. Yet as long as there is energy flow and real communication, there will also be words, because words are concrete symbols for how we each experience our lives (for those of us who are verbal). And I think when we feel safe with one another words become a freedom, and a way to bring us closer. Ben Okri writes in his book A Way of Being Free:
"Yes, the highest things are beyond words. This is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something higher. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions."
Words become a part of my bones, become silent and glowing inside of me when I read them. Words spoken are my meagre attempt to speak of that glowing, to make that glowing real to someone else, and to make me understood and real to others. Clamour can be a result of such speaking, yet when resonance or intuition happens, the people who do understand to some degree will see beyond words, and see that glow simply by sitting next to me and I to them.
Comments