The old man tells his tales of days long gone.
He simply wants an audience to validate his life-song.

He’s real.
He’s here.
He’s heard,
far and near.

Does this make his life more or less than what it was?

Language damns and limits.
It erects walls and pushes chasms of misunderstanding between them.
It is the favored tool of manipulators and politicians.
The boon companion of confidence men.

We fall prey to its deceptions daily.
Struggling to understand and make ourselves understood.
What we mean, filters through what we say.
What we say, changes what we mean.
What we meant to say gets lost.

This imperfect tool betrays us time and again.
We still persist to worship at its altar.
Syllable and consonant,
Adjective and adverb,
Loquacious largesse, inflating our value.
It is all we have.

Or is it?
Can we stop talking and start listening?
Can we give up the quest for the Word,
And pick up the quest for the Heart?
I think we can.

The Spaniards Inn, Lon?don 2010