Talking with one another

[Eva Libre]

Art : Christian Schloe

"The mother tongue, spoken or written, expects an answer. It is conversation, a word the root means, ‘turning together.’ The mother tongue is not mere communication but relation. It connects. It goes two ways, many ways, an exchange, a network. Its power is not in dividing but in binding, not in distancing but in uniting. It is written, but not by scribes and secretaries for posterity: it flies from the mouth on the breath that is our life and is gone, like the outbreath, utterly gone and yet returning, repeated.

It is a language always on the verge of silence and often on the verge of song. It is the language stories are told in. It is the language spoken by all children and most women, and so I call it the mother tongue, for we learn it from our mothers, and speak it to our kids…feeling our way into ideas, using the whole intellect not half of it, talking with one another, which involves listening."

 Ursula Le Guin