Lorem Ipsum

The case for greeking out.

If I were invited to a party filled with awkward nerds, Noam Chomsky would be my plus-one. That’s because he’d have a linguist’s faith in our ability to strike up meaningful conversation. Chomsky is famous for theorizing that we have a biological ability to process language — to acquire it, organize it in a universal system, and to express ourselves with it; this fluency is hardwired into our brains. And because of this, we can generate infinite ideas using only a finite number of words. Standing around the chips and dips, we’re capable of far more than dry-mouthed chit chat. We can engage in deeply satisfying dialogue. In theory.

“The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.” - Noam Chomsky

I tend to force everything into words. To explain. To connect the dots using this little semiotic system we call language. As a writer (and as a chatty person) I can’t help it. The Broca Area of my brain — the lower part of my left frontal lobe — is the only part that gets any action. If the old French guy who discovered this spot were to examine my gray matter, he’d see my language center pulsing away, and everything else shriveled up like California Raisins (sans gloves). Mon dieu! Alas, deciphering linguistic code is the only thing that scratches my itch. If I can’t find a word for something, it goes uncomprehended.

“I speak, therefore I am,” might be another way of putting it.

But currently, I’m seriously questioning “reality itself” —  as in Chomsky’s definition — the one I created for myself through words. I’ve been in a flop sweat since last week’s election beat down. I’m considering which addictions might be the most practical for the next few years (cigarettes vs. sports betting). I don’t sleep particularly well, or at all. My diet is all-starch. And all the feel-good Instagram poetry in the world doesn’t feel better than a very, very strong Old Fashioned. Sorry, Mary Oliver, you ain’t doing it for me right now.

In this current state of stupefaction, I’m dumbfounded. I can’t think straight, and I certainly can’t put this shitstorm into an ordered system, no matter how biologically wired I am for it. After months of having words (and emotions and hysteria and breathless pronouncements and threats) shoved down my throat by Big Media, I have no response. I feel taken advantage of by language. Abandoned. 

The finite nature of language has left me empty, and incapable of generating anything. 

What is there left to say?

---

Lorem ipsum (above) is a passage of fancy looking Latin text. On the surface, it connotes deep thinking, comprehensible only by well-trained people — people who took higher level classes. Not like the rest of us slobs in Regular English and Remedial Math. And chorus. But this little Latin pullquote isn’t Latin at all. It’s gobbledygook. It’s dummy copy used as a placeholder by graphic designers and typesetters.

It’s text used specifically to avoid making meaning.

Way back before Chomsky’s time, in the 1500s, typesetters would manually assemble text using the most finite version of language of all: a type case. One by one, they’d pull letters from little compartments (capital letters from the upper case, small letters from the lower case). They spent hours forming lines and columns. It was painstaking work; each line was laid out backwards so that it would create a mirror image when printed. This brain twisting process involved a hierarchy of apprentices and journeymen who made their way up the chain of a printing “chapel” over the course of their lifetimes. I can imagine it was a stressful operation, a little like the terrible movie “The Paper” (1994) starring Michael Keaton where a lot of people run around screaming in bad wigs.

Now, imagine some irritating 16th Century fellow stopping by to check out a sample of type for their upcoming bible project, or whatever. And he gets in a knot because the mocked up text contains something mildly upsetting (i.e. bawdy). And the customer loses it. He can’t choose between Blackletter and Roman — he can’t even process what it looks like — because the meaning of what he sees gets in the way. He has no choice but to make meaning of it!! His hardwired brain commands it!

To avoid these types of exchanges, the clever printing chaps began mocking up text in gibberish Latin — a process also known as greeking (lowercase g). And they used this silly string of words to keep irritating types calm and cool. Lorem ipsum, fucker. They said when the man in the wig left the shop, door a’jingling. Don’t think so much.

Long before Pierre Paul Broca located the command center for language (and its cousin, meaning), these frazzled typesetters knew something even more important: meaning is distracting. Debilitating! And, even worse, potentially bad for business.

Ok. It would be a neat little essay if it ended there. But, of course, there’s some messiness. Or maybe “intrigue” — as my command center informs me. Because for all you well-trained Latin (language) lovers out there, you actually can unscramble and translate this passage. And, not so long ago, a word nerd did just that. As it turns out, this gobbledygook came from De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, published in 45 BC by Cicero. The dummy copy actually means something: 

"There is no one who loves pain, who seeks after it, wants to have it simply because it is pain.” - Cicero

(Apparently, Cicero had never met anyone who reads the New York Times.)

With this one innocuous placeholder, Cicero and the typesetters managed to subvert the guy with the bible project. People like me. Big Media. And the entire 21st Century. I’d call that a big win for the Greeks, whose rhetorical strategy involved extended arguments with themselves and their philosopher pals. Besides throwing the discus, this was a legitimate sport. And so it continues. As does Lorem Ipsum itself.

In the letter case that contains our infinite grammar, we are hardwired to choose words that reflect our interior state. Chomsky, like so many over-educated intellectuals (ahem), was merely stating the obvious. But what floors me is the extent to which we continue to make meaning, even when we try hard not to. We can’t not do it. My current moratorium on news, on scrolling in fuckland, on listening to pundits, on checking the weather, on even the most casual political conversation is not working. I have rsvp’d “no” to the awkward conversations. I’ve sworn off the social chips and dips. 

But I still can’t block out what’s going on around me. I can’t avoid making meaning.

I am stuck inside here with myself, left with my one working brain area, and my very own placeholder: Lorem Ipsum. Pain itself.

---

** Thanks for reading! Hope you’re limiting your time in fuckland, too. xox **