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When we hear the words “freedom of speech” we think things like democracy, a free press, the right to assembly and other inalienable rights. But freedom of speech also has another meaning. In speech and language we are totally free. We are free not only in a constitutional and political sense, but we are free even from the laws of physics. Our freedom allows us to recreate ourselves and even God. In our words we may fly above the clouds, create and destroy worlds and universes or travel through time itself. Time travel is quite possible and we do it all the time. We just travel in one direction, forward, into the future. We just haven’t figured out yet how to put the vehicle in reverse.
This total freedom of speech is really the freedom of our imagination. We simply put the images and actions of our imagination down in writing and that freedom of our fantasy world becomes freedom of speech.
The poet Wallace Stevens unlocks the power of this freedom in his collection of essays entitled “The Necessary Angel.” Stevens takes this title from a line in one of his poems:
ANGEL SURROUNDED BY PAYSANS
One of the countrymen :
There is
A welcome at the door to which no one comes?
The angel :
I am the angel of reality,
Seen for the moment standing in the door.
I have neither ashen wing nor wear of ore
And live without a tepid aureole,
Or stars that follow me, not to attend,
But, of my being and its knowing, part.
I am one of you and being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.
Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again,
Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set,
And, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone
Rise liquidly in liquid lingerings
Like watery words awash; like meanings said
By repetitions of half meanings. Am I not,
Myself, only half of a figure of a sort,
A figure half seen, or seen for a moment, a man
Of the mind, an apparition apparelled in
Apparels of such lightest look that a turn
Of my shoulder and quickly, too quickly, I am gone?
There are angels in every religion. Even if religions seem to agree on little else, they agree on angels.
Ever since early childhood I have felt the enormous power and freedom of imagination. Robert Frost speaks of being “immortally wounded” by the line of a poem. The tragedy of the addictive personality is that it constantly seeks to recreate that initial high of their first intoxication or first sexual experience. In my reading and writing I have always sought to re-experience as new and fresh that numinous thrill of something transcendent. Whenever I attempted to write, I sought words as weapons to immortally wound the souls of others. I wanted my words to by that exquisite virgin child dancing, secretly, shamelessly and seductively, naked before the gaping eyes and speechless opened mouths of a throng of aged renunciates stunned motionless yet trembling at the sight of what they have always longed for yet never dared imagine much less speak. Innocence is ripe with a lust all its own.
This delirious freedom is always here, surrounding us. This freedom is our Buddha nature. We are always free but we must work to escape the illusion that we are not free. We are fish seeking the ocean, failing to realize that it surrounds us.
How grateful I am that there are Hemingways and Stevens and Frosts in this world of mine. My world would have been so much more impoverished without their words. Yet it is not enough for me to read their words and be wounded by them. I want to write such words and wound all future generations. But I cannot imitate their words for that is their voice and style. There can only be one Hemingway, one Stevens, one Frost. The world has no need for two. I must find my own voice and style. How many voices are there in any given reality? How many heroes are there in any given universe in any given eternity? Even God’s voice of many waters is one voice with a style all its own. Perhaps I can become the water of many voices. Do you think God would mind if I do that? Would you, the reader, mind?
I shall become the waters of Babylon, and on my banks you shall lay down your instruments and weep. I shall be a river flowing out of Eden. I shall be a red sea and a sea of reeds to swallow all the pharaohs. I shall be the deep of the frolicking leviathan. I shall be the Mississippi for your raft adventures. I shall be your crossed Rubicon. I shall become the water of many voices and in it I shall find my voice at last.
The world is transformed with words, one person at a time.
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