Language is a beautiful creature, full of redundancies and flaws. Every word of every language carries with it thousands of years of history, imagery, sound and colour. It is a living organism that grows, evolves, mutates and adapts. Who decides how this process unfurls? Everybody, and nobody. Trying to codify language, is ambitious, but ultimately futile. (And yet, in a sense, it must be attempted.) I’m always amused when I witness people arguing over some of the inevitable grey areas of language. None of us is afraid, none of us are afraid. perhaps ‘none’ means ‘not one’, but perhaps it has since taken on the meaning of ‘not all’, in the modern, contemporary context. We see such arguments in all forms of communication- in music, in art, in theater- about what is the “right” way of doing things. There are no concrete rules in any of them that can never be broken- there are general guidelines that (…which?) serve as scaffolding to help beginners grasp at some semblance of order amidst the chaotic complexity. Don’t play this chord after that, don’t use this colour next to that one. As a general rule, do this or that to achieve this or that effect.

But language, like music, art, cities and science- cannot be completely reduced into something orderly or chaotic. It is complex. There is a method to the madness, and a madness to the method. Following strict guidelines in dance, governance, architecture, romance, conversation, parenting or sport is a recipe for uninspired mediocrity. The white noise of mindless chaos isn’t particularly different, either. (I don’t think it’s very much possible for humans to be ‘completely chaotic’, if such a thing is even possible, because our minds are wired to seek structure, meaning and explanation. We are never as completely random as we like to think we are- just that the connections we make are sometimes unexpected.)

Almost anything beautiful is necessarily complex. It can be simple. Complexity does not mean complicated. It must have depth. Simple doesn’t mean easy. It took the universe billions of years to produce a cow, but a bull and a few willing cows can easily produce several more. This does not reduce the beauty and complexity of the being that is the cow.