"Aaahhh!" "Ooohhh!"
'Tis the Season for Holy Breath! Gasps of wonder, exhalations of delight and joy permeate a toddler's response to the vibrant colors, lights, and sounds of the season. Twinkling, fragrant evergreens announce that time is about to stand still for children, young and old, all over the world. We're starting over. Light is about to return to Earth at solstice. Hope is on the horizon. Why wouldn't we breathe it all in deeply? Why on Earth wouldn't we? While the trees are exhaling, wouldn't it be great if we all took a deep, cleansing breath?
Breath is said to inhere in every facet of creation; one sacred story of creation imagines a divine "Breath" (<Gk. πνεύματος = Pneumatos= Holy Spirit/Breath/Wind) that stirred all life into being. "And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit (breath/wind) of God was hovering over the surface of the waters." (Gen. 1:2; NAB)
The power of breath is phenomenal. It is ubiquitous throughout creation. Trees breathe out. Humans inhale. Eco-Breath-Mates, forever entwined. Eco-symbiotic breath makes anthropophony (human-generated sound) and human language possible. Without inhalation, exhalation, a descended larynx, hyoid bones, and complex brains, humans would still be language-deficient. And even though we remain curious about how human language originated (e.g., the "Bow-Wow" Theory, the "Ding-Dong" Theory, "La-La," "Ta-Ta," "Yo-He-Yo," and "Pooh-Pooh" theories, among others, have been floated), we recognize the multitudes of breath-rich exclamatory cognates embedded in phonetic memes across many language traditions, and throughout the branches of the Language Tree. The Bow-Wow and Ding-Dong theories, which hold that human language originated through our interaction with and imitation of the natural soundscape, have been largely pushed aside as not bearing sufficient evidence to hold up to rigorous scientific scrutiny.
The evidence may not be solely confirmed in multi-lingual phonetic memes; Nature-human language interplay is encoded in our very breath. How are phonetic memes, embedded in human languages, related to sounds of Nature?
Phonology (<Gk. φωνή, phōnḗ, 'voice, sound') is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages systematically organize sound/phones (voice/sound) embedded in language signs. Phonology describes the way the sounds and signs within a given language or across languages encode meaning, and phonetic memes reflect our complexity, diversity, and inter-dependence with the natural world. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonology)
For example, what similarities might be noticed in breath-rich words across languages that reflect natural sounds? Cross-linguistic onomatopoeia (words that sound like what they signify) reveals that "oh, ah, ai, au, ay" sounds reflect what resonates with Earth's own sounds. These embedded sounds in words across languages are omnipresent among words that signify cries of amazement or distress. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias) Like a voiced glottal fricative, "AHA," we can recognize sounds that reflect and evoke nature's symphony of coordinated breath. A generative, deep, cleansing breath. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_glottal_fricative#:~:text=Features%20of%20the%20voiced%20glottal,in%20a%20modally%20voiced%20sound.)
Now, what goes "AAAHHH" or "OOOHHHH" in Nature?
Soundscape ecology studies sounds of biophony (sounds generated by biological organisms like animals - lions, crickets, frogs, birds) and bioacoustics (animal communication), geophony (sounds generated by non-biological Nature like wind, rain, thunder, shifting subterranean strata), and anthropophony (human-generated sound). What we might notice from soundscape ecology is that breath-rich sounds inhere in wind currents, water currents, and animal calls that are pronounced in periods of courtship and mating. Wherever there is repetitive movement, flowing, and potential for life, there is breathy sound.
The sound "OM" - repeated as a sacred Hindu mantram for centuries - is said to reside at 136.1 HZ, a cosmic sound intimately connected with creation. (Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, Sound and Communication: An Aesthetic Cultural History of Sanskrit Hinduism, De Gruyter, 2011, 435-456) The Schumann Resonance at 7.83 HZ, Earth's natural resonance, is said to affect human brain function with positive physical and mental health effects. Sound at certain vibrational resonance has the capacity to heal and soothe, calm and generate energy. (https://brainworldmagazine.com/tuning-in-to-the-earths-natural-rhythm/) Calibrating our body's vibrating energy to Earth's rhythms by tuning into natural sounds can help heal, strengthen, and connect us with the biospheric whole.
This is the time for going deeper. While light and hope are returning to Earth, Nature is calling us back to our breath. It's the Mother Tongue, the Lingua Terra, the language of Earth that speaks throughout all language, human and more-than-human. It is the language of Earth/Love that births poetry, launches ships, and eulogizes the saints among us. It is the child's primary exclamation of wonder, the lover's cries of ecstasy, and the elder's dying insight. Nature's language is the language of Love: the primordial sound that calls us into being and breathes through and with us every moment. That's the power of Breath.
Now.
If we could all open up, and say "AAAHHH!"
Yorumlar