You Don't Need Words To Tell a Story

Throughout this week I have spent a lot of time thinking about various forms of communication.  We set so much store in communicating through either spoken or written word, and while that is certainly important and effective, we often lose sight of the countless other forms of communication available to us.  Especially in the United States, many people think of music and dance only as forms of entertainment, and not as methods of communication.  We also often don’t take the time to read peoples’ body language.  Trethewey mentioned body language multiple times in her poems, such as when she describes a man’s grief in “What The Body Can Say” (Trethewey, 9), or the 2^nd section of “Scenes From a Documentary History of Mississippi” (Trethewey, 22), in which she details the body position of suffering.  This concept hit me again today in class when we used theater, music, rhythms, and bodies to help share our ideas.  I personally believe that this integration of written/spoken language with other forms of communication helped me to understand and remember the concepts much better than if we had only talked about them.  Looking back on class, I have audio and visual aids to help me remember the words that we shared.  This poem attempts to reflect on those other various methods of communication in my own way.

You don’t need words to tell a story.

We focus so much on spoken language,

Written words.

Trying our best to fit

Everyone into a little box where

We all sound the same.

But we forget that

There is so much more to communication

Than everyone speaking English.

I have stories in my body,

You have experience in your song,

They have history in their faces.

Sometimes we say we can’t understand

But really we just haven’t been taught

How to listen.

How to truly listen.

How to watch,

And feel,

And let connections form.

It doesn’t have to be through a shared set

Of vowels and consonants.

Agreed upon beforehand,

Rigid.

There are truths that my lips

Just can’t tell the way my body can.

Swirling, stomping, stretching,

Dancing-

Our bodies paint pictures

If we let them.

There are emotions that you can’t explain,

You just have to sing them.

Classical training and instruction be damned,

Anyone can sing

If you open your mouth

And let your feelings come out.

Pitches and rhythms,

Dynamics and vibrations,

Breathing and releasing

Tell stories on their own.

Sometimes you hear a song

And it stirs something in you.

Drums thump out your history,

Bass lines outlining the support of your ancestry.

The melody tells your story,

And in the harmonies you hear your friends.

And sometimes you see someone,

A stranger.

You don’t know them,

And they don’t know you.

You don’t speak.

But you can learn so much

From the story their body is telling,

Pain and joy are so clear to hear

If you only take the time

To watch for them.

We spend so much time asking

“What’s wrong?”

Forgetting that the answer

May be right there in front of us.

We spend so much time talking

That we forget to communicate,

To really tell each other

I hear you.

I see you.

Sometimes, I get so caught up in language

That I fumble my words

And you miss the point

So really why couldn’t I just

Sing you a damn song.

Maybe then you could finally

Understand me.