I believe Rodney Jones is arguing the impossibility of
language to truly explain reality.
He first states this by saying that there is "no image like the
image of language". Language
is indeed a human construction, a convention a number of people agreed on to
make communication easier or even possible. This verse makes me think of Magritte's The Treachery of
Images. In this painting, he draws
a pipe and underneath it he writes "Ceci n'est pas une pipe",
"This is not a pipe".
Indeed, that is not a pipe. It is the image of a pipe, a mere visual representation of a real, physical object. This concept can also be applied to words: they are not the object they are naming, but just a written (or oral) representation.
Following this reasoning, another point Jones makes about language is evidencing its limitations. The last three verses are a clear reference to the difficulty of successfully translating our thoughts into language. No matter how quick we try to be, some of our ideas will get lost between the moment we think them up in our brain and the moment we write them down. But what else can we do? Jones does not see an alternative, as he admits that everything we can hope is that, by the time we "reach down" once again, our idea will come back to us.
Thank you for the insightful post. I never thought about it this way! I really love how you included the artwork. That was very clever. I interpreted it very differently, as more of the struggle of writing, and maybe throwing away work. All in all, great job! Great use of multi-media too! Keep up the good work and see you in January! Have fun back home!
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