For Mikhail Bakhtin, dialogue is a form of relationality that defines our being in the world. In fact, there is no such thing as a monologue for we are always in a state of criss-crossing a multiple discourse. Even as I write this the radio is playing, someone outside is shouting at a dog (and quite right too), I am hearing that my daughter isn't well (nothing serious), my son is texting about where in the library he likes to work and even as I type I am thinking about when next to buy a flight to Edinburgh to see my dad; but also I am in a state of constant flux created by my cultural conditioning, surroundings and languages, not to mention the languages and cultures I have never come across or don't know about because there is only so much of the world we can take in. I took this picture in the Metropolitan in New York. Is it art or an artefact of early written language, or both? And if you look really carefully you may see a ghosted image of the photographer too. There is only so much dialogue we can take in... Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, 'The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.' Is that what is happening here, in this blog, am I reflecting on the broken dialogues of my own life, on what I no longer do? Goodness, surely not, otherwise I feel a huge sigh coming on. Well here is another Schopenhauer quotation I have in my notebook (I am collecting material again because I am writing an article on 'broken dialogues') 'Music is the melody whose text is the world.' Somehow it describes Lévon Minassian and Armand Amar's Dara Nuni well. I know nothing about Armenia except what this piece, and other pieces from them can tell me, it is the melody of the text of their world; a world which I do not know - happy Friday, its a 5am start (and boy did that flu jab kick in - I will have better starts):
