The next summer we went to France for six weeks, and I added another 420 words, most of them found in the popular gossip magazine Voici. “Man-eater,” I’d say. “Gold digger, roustabout, louse.”
“Who are you talking about?” my neighbors would ask. “What social climber? Where?”
On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned “Lie down,” “Shut up,” and “Who shit on this carpet?” The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. “Is thems the thoughts of cows?” I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window. “I want me some lamb chop with handles on ‘em.”
-David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Well I know a woman with a collection of sticks
She could fight back the hundreds of voices she heard
And she could poke at the greed, she could fend off her need
And with anger she found she could pound every word.
But one voice got through, caught her up by surprise
It said, “Don’t hold us back; we’re the story you tell,”
And no sooner than spoken, a spell had been broken
And the voices before her were trumpets and tympani
Violins, basses and woodwinds and cellos, singing
“We’re so glad that you finally made it here
You thought nobody cared, but we did, we could tell
And now you’ll dance through the days while the orchestra plays
And oh-oh oh-oh-oh oh-oh, you’re aging well.”
-Dar Williams, “You’re Aging Well”
