Reminds me of Walter Ong in Orality and Literacy. “Written words are residue. Oral tradition has no such residue or deposit.” Speech can exist without writing, but writing can never exist without speech. Meaning, in other words, begins as a lived, relational event before it ever becomes something we can return to on the page.
I like Le Guin here. In a city with no spare time, time is only occupied by living. And you have to choose how to live meaningfully inside the density of it!
Reminds me of Walter Ong in Orality and Literacy. “Written words are residue. Oral tradition has no such residue or deposit.” Speech can exist without writing, but writing can never exist without speech. Meaning, in other words, begins as a lived, relational event before it ever becomes something we can return to on the page.
I like Le Guin here. In a city with no spare time, time is only occupied by living. And you have to choose how to live meaningfully inside the density of it!
Bang on: Le Guin references Ong extensively in this essay! “Sound exists only when it is going out of existence.”