Stewart, What you say here is universal. Words too often define the idea.
> I have often been surprised at how important the word for something > is. The word may even become more important than the thing it > represents. From time to time I play my theorbo in a concert. > Sometimes people ask me what the instrument is called. When I say, > "It's a theorbo", they walk away. The word is all they need to know. > It is almost as if by knowing the word, they fully understand > whatever is represented by that word. For years I searched for a T.S. Eliot quote "I've got to use words when I talk to you". I knew it was said by "Sweeney", but it was in none of the "Sweeney poems". Finally found it in "Fragment of an Agon", and said by Sweeney. Words are important, they are our way of communicating concepts. But as every word in each language has a slightly different context even to native speakers, to say nothing of in translation, there is a tyranny of words that can overpower the underlying concept. The instrumental example is simple compared with the social and political, but yet it is telling. It is a "theorbo", that is what it is!. It is not a "theorbo", it is the music made by that theorbo in the hands of that musician. "It is a bird", but is it a lark or a crow - and does that define the bird's song? If I call the crow a lark does that change the "caw" into a melody? Shakespeare and Gertrude Stein shared one flower, the rose. But a different way of looking at it. "By any other name should smell so sweet" versus "a rose is a rose is a rose". Words are necessary, but not always sufficient. Best, Jon
