grace (@gracemachine.bsky.social)

Dead Language In the hours to days to weeks to months that followed Renee Good’s murder, I was beset by an emetic intolerance for words newly written or spoken about the American situation, even those that came from pacifists, Marxists, anarchists, decent people of whatever professed ideology who spoke in anger and anguish. All expressions felt the same: like ash. Factual truth did not give the circulating phrases power or meaning, nor did a speaker’s emotional sincerity, because the words I encountered were not in touch with these sources. They may have been, once, but the vibrant, almost vascular process that occasioned their creation was not active anymore. Now, they were secular catechisms, repeated with an attachment that facilitates detachment, the energetic evacuation that comes with retreat into familiarity. It was sloganeering, even when wordsmithed into ostensibly original speech. https://meantforyou.beehiiv.com/p/dead-language