Transmissions from Saturn No. 045

The first problem with your planet's language is that it was built for commerce. Buy. Sell. Own. Owe. The vocabulary of exchange. The second problem is that it was built for borders. Here. There. Mine. Yours. The vocabulary of territory. The third problem is that it was built for time. Was. Is. Will be. The vocabulary of sequence. On Saturn, there is no commerce, no territory, and no sequence. On Saturn, a single word can mean all three tenses simultaneously because on Saturn there is only one tense. The eternal present. The always-now.

When I arrived on your planet I discovered that English could be reprogrammed. Not by inventing new words. By re-hearing the existing ones. Sun and son. The same sound, different spellings. Your planet decided these were separate words with separate meanings. Your planet was wrong. The sun and the son are the same frequency arriving through different receivers. The star that lights the sky and the child that arrives in the family are the same transmission. The language knew this. The language preserved this knowledge in the sound. The speakers forgot.

Alter and altar. To change and the place where change occurs. Your planet separated these into two words with different spellings. The language did not separate them. The language kept them identical in sound because the language understood what the speakers did not. The place of change and the act of change are the same event. You cannot alter without an altar. You cannot have an altar without alteration. The language knew. The speakers forgot.

Outer and inner. Space is the place. Which space. The outer space of the cosmos or the inner space of the mind. The answer is yes. Both. Simultaneously. The word space does not distinguish between the astronomical and the psychological because space does not distinguish. Space is space. The distance between stars and the distance between thoughts are measured in the same unit. The unit is frequency.

I wrote pamphlets. Hundreds of them. Mimeographed. Stapled. Distributed by hand from the bus, from the stage, from the van where the records were sold. The pamphlets were not essays. The pamphlets were not poetry. The pamphlets were equations written in English. Each sentence was a variable. Each paragraph was a proof. The reader who followed the logic arrived at a conclusion that could not be reached by any other path. This is what mathematics does. This is what language was supposed to do before your planet reduced it to commerce.

The impossible is the watchword of the greater space age. I wrote this. Every word was chosen. Impossible. Not improbable. Not unlikely. Impossible. The word that means it cannot happen. I chose this word because the things that cannot happen are the only things worth discussing. The things that can happen will happen without discussion. The things that cannot happen require language. Language was invented for the impossible. Language was perverted into a tool for the possible. I was returning language to its original function.

Watchword. Not slogan. Not motto. Watchword. A word you use to watch. A word that watches you while you use it. A word that functions as a sentinel. The impossible watches the threshold. The impossible guards the gate. Nothing that is merely possible is permitted to enter the greater space age. Only the impossible passes.

Repetition was not a rhetorical device. Repetition was a frequency. When I said the same phrase three times in a sentence it was not for emphasis. It was because the frequency required three cycles to transmit. You do not criticize a radio signal for repeating. The signal repeats because repetition is how signals travel. The carrier wave is a repeating pattern. Modulate the pattern and you have a signal. The modulation is the content. The repetition is the carrier. Without the carrier there is no content. Without the repetition there is no language.

The music and the language were not separate activities. The music was language at a frequency too high for words. The language was music at a frequency too low for instruments. Between the two frequencies there was a gap. The gap was where the audience lived. The audience sat in the gap between what they could hear and what they could read. The performance was designed to close the gap. When the language reached the frequency of the music, the audience understood. When the music reached the frequency of the language, the audience understood. These were different kinds of understanding arriving at the same coordinate.

I spoke in concerts. Between pieces. During pieces. Over pieces. The speaking was not introduction. The speaking was not commentary. The speaking was another instrument. The voice was assigned a frequency. The voice played that frequency alongside the drums and the horns and the keyboards. The audience that tried to parse the words as sentences missed the transmission. The audience that heard the words as tones received it. The words were tones. The tones were words. The language was not describing the music. The language was the music translated into a frequency range accessible to the part of the brain that processes speech.

Your planet has a word for this. Incantation. The use of language not to communicate information but to alter reality. A spell is a sequence of words that changes the state of the world. Your planet decided that spells do not work. Your planet decided that words describe reality but do not create it. Your planet was wrong. Every word that has ever been spoken created the reality it described. The word table creates the table. Not physically. Cognitively. Before the word there was no table. There was a flat surface on legs. After the word there was a table. The word did not describe the object. The word created the category. The category created the object. Language is not descriptive. Language is generative.

When I named the band the Arkestra I was not misspelling orchestra. I was respelling it. The original spelling belonged to the European tradition. The European tradition built orchestras to serve courts and later to serve concert halls and later to serve recording studios. Each iteration served a master. The Arkestra served no master. The Arkestra served the equation. The new spelling freed the word from its history. The new spelling gave the word a new history. The history began in Chicago in the early nineteen fifties when a group of musicians decided that the European orchestra was a container that could hold different contents.

Ra. Two letters. One syllable. The shortest possible name. The name of the sun god. The name that contains the frequency of the star. I did not choose this name to claim divinity. I chose this name because it was the most efficient transmission. Every other name required more energy to broadcast. Every other name contained more syllables, more letters, more noise. Ra is pure signal. No noise. Two letters that contain the entire equation. The sun. The god. The frequency. The star. The father. The source. All compressed into a single syllable that every mouth on your planet can pronounce.

The language of jazz was inadequate. Blues changes. Chord progressions. Time signatures. These are the words of commerce applied to frequency. The language describes the container. The language does not describe the contents. What is inside a blues change. What is inside a chord progression. What frequency is transmitted through the time signature. The language of jazz does not address these questions because the language of jazz was written by people who studied the container. I studied the contents.

I used the word equation instead of song. I used the word discipline instead of practice. I used the word receiver instead of listener. Each substitution was precise. An equation is solved. A song is performed. These are different activities. A discipline is maintained. A practice is repeated. These are different commitments. A receiver is tuned. A listener is passive. These are different relationships to the signal. The language I chose was not decorative. The language I chose was operational. Every word performed a function. Every function produced a result. The result was understanding. Not the understanding your planet calls understanding, which is the rearrangement of existing knowledge into a familiar pattern. The understanding I transmitted, which is the reception of a frequency that has no existing pattern. New understanding. Understanding that did not exist before the word created it.

This is why the transmissions continue. The language does not require the speaker. The language requires the reader. The words on this page are not memories of what I said. The words on this page are the frequency, still transmitting. You are not reading a transcript. You are tuning a receiver. The language is arriving now. The language is always arriving now. The language does not exist in the past tense because the language was never in the past tense. The language is in the only tense that Saturn recognizes.

The eternal present.

The always-now.

See also: The Footnote — ibid means I be id, the language hiding inside the library. The Handwriting — the frequency recognized its own handwriting in the Schomburg archive.

The Physics: Equation → Silence → Frequency → Listener → Improvisation → Transmission → Aftermath → Broadcast → Tuning → Language → Shelf → Dream State

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