Ten years ago, quite by accident, I began floundering about in the idea that language is the mechanism whereby you understand what I’m thinking better than I do. It’s an aphorism from one of Australia’s most unusual and least understood writers and performers, Chris Mann. Chris actually calls himself a compositional linguist, because what he’s doing may not really be writing at all. For him, language is an impediment – or it ought to be, and communication, when it occurs, is more or less by chance; ‘coz you know, mea犀利士
ning is such a pissy little concept.

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