The Poetry of Spittle

The Poetry of Spittle

Careless Whisper was one of the most popular love ballads in the 80s. I remember reading in a magazine interview once that George Michael was very proud of the fact that managed to use a rather unromantic word such as "feet" in a love song. He was of course referring to the famous line from the song: "Guilty feet have got no rhythm".

When I listened to Dewa's song, Risalah Cinta from their Bintang Lima album, I was similarly impressed. It is also a very romantic love song, but Dewa used an even more unromantic word in it: "spit"-- "Sebelum kau ludahi aku, sebelum kau robek hatiku" (before you spit on me, before you tear my heart apart). Used in the context, the word does not sound out of place.

I like strong imageries like that, especially when evoked by words put in an unconventional context. Poetry is fun mainly because of sound and imagery. But a lot of people read poetry and ask for its "meaning". To me meaning is secondary. It is sound, rhythm and imagery that matters. We listen to songs because we like the emotions that they evoke, not so much for their "meaning". Poetry achieves that with the rhythm and imagery of words, stringed together by a thematic thread.

To me words do not have fixed and precise meanings. The majority of words we possess in our vocabulary are not learnt from referring to dictionaries. Dictionaries give point definitions, almost like an x-y coordinate. But words are much more than that.

Words are like electrons in the atom--we can never pinpoint their positions exactly: There's a "probability pattern"-- an area where they are most likely to be found. Scientists see an atom as having an electron "cloud".

We learn words from deducing their meanings through repeated encounters with them in many different context and situations. We narrow down their possibilities--we get a "probability pattern", a "word cloud", if you will.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that the more precisely we know the position of an electron, the less we know about its velocity or momentum. Similarly, words that are defined precisely are "dead" in meaning. Their possibilities become finite.

In poetry, poets attempt to explore the edges of the word cloud--to expand the possibilities of words. If a poet veers too far away from the center of the word cloud, he could risk alienating the reader and his writing would be considered incomprehensible, or worse, he could be misunderstood. A good poet stretches and teases but never alienate the reader.

A language grows because words are fertile in meaning and possibilities. And poets are the explorers of their uncharted realms. We do not always need fancy words to convey deep thoughts or feelings. George Michael and Dewa proved that even humble ones like "feet" and "spit" are ripe with poetic possiblities.