the problem of language

I broke my golden rule:
putting the computer on before early prayer finished.
this always makes prayer later much harder:
distraction; scouring internet instead of soul;
trying to be creative in uncreative ways . . .
but
trying to say the psalms today - having listened to an amazing performance of gaspard de la nuit yesterday and then gone and delighted, for half an hour, in exploring ravel's way of using the piano (linked I think to flamenco).
I need, urgently, to get to the bottom of this problem about languages. [or perhaps I sense a possible way through this?]
ravel's musical language is a gateway for him and for the talented pianist. it opens up a way of listening and a way of interpreting which offers apparently endless possibility until you come to the edge and realise just how limited it actually is.
there are a thousand things you can do within his vocabulary and you can push that boundary right to the edge but if you push too hard you fall out of ravel's 'realm' and meaning is suddenly completely lost.

language is all we have to communicate with, but if you speak with the wrong one noone understands you. you become not just unintelligible but alien as well: and possibly then an enemy - depending upon how trusting is the person to whom you are trying to make yourself understood. (don't get lost in your own details here!)

last night I watched again the 'arena' programme about t s elliott: a poet who I have so often 'tried' but never 'understood'. elliott (deliberately) obscures by using language in a 'clashing' way; juxtaposing images which don't belong, silly songs, foreign words (italian, german, latin etc), and all sorts of apparent intellectual snares to confuse and alienate his reader.
so he uses language against itself: making the point perhaps (rather like postmodern artists do?) that, whilst it can sound as though we should be able to understand it,(poetic flow and all that) actually the real meaning still alludes us and that feeling of 'being outside'; of not understanding (as kingsley amis discusses in the arena programme) becomes deeply disturbing which, I suppose, might be why I can never get to the end of an elliott poem. but it might be also exactly what he was trying to do. . .
. . . . I had the thought later on that perhaps elliott is more like dylan thomas than I realise in that he is looking for a deeper meaning below the 'normal' meaning of words . . . in the way that music sometimes succeeds in doing (not always I think). a sentence with urgent poetic flow - despite not being intellectually understandable - might have a hidden power of its own: a power then of 'spirit' and 'imagery' which enables it to crawl under the intellectual fence as it were and take us into a different realm . . . . .and so the 'normal' search for intellectual meaning in the sentence actually stops us from 'appreciating' it at this deeper level. ('he who has ears . . . . .' )

and how does that relate to my problem?
the problem of day-to-day language is that it excludes things that need to be said (spiritual things) and so we have to look for another language which does say them. (for me this is essentially the psalms). there is no place for 'God' in everyday language which is all about shopping and the weather and health and news. [any time I use the word God in my everyday language arent I really just straying into the language of the psalms?]

which brings me back to music because it strikes me today quite forcefully that, strictly speaking, there is no place for God in music either; in the sense that you cannot say: 'God' with sounds. . . .this means that the whole language is in a different 'realm' which renders it meaningless when juxtaposed with the psalms which are always about God. . . .
. . . .of course I realise that there is something I havent understood here, only I can't put my finger on it.

are the psalms always about God? isnt it more accurate to say that they are addressed to him rather than that they are about him? (actually, of course, it is often both or either). and , similarly, he is more often apparently absent than apparently present - and the apparently bit seems curiously important here.

in music we do not address anyone: we slap sound onto a canvas and it has to mean what it means and can mean nothing else and yet, if I ignore the need to do that slapping onto canvas, I gradually lose my grip on something essential . . . or is that just self-fulfilling nonsense?
ok lets take this from another angle: language creates its own assumptions. it has to because otherwise no meaning could be conveyed by it at all.
(and yet perhaps modern poetry (eg. elliott) is exactly questioning those assumptions.)

language is something taught by the person whose language it is. If I want to live in spain I learn spanish from a spaniard but, even if I lived in spain, I would still say the psalms in english because I wouldn't be addressing a spanish God any more than I address an english one . . . my audience is different . . .

suddenly thinking now about the malcolm arnold 5th symphony I heard the other day and, over and against this, mahler. mahler incorporates into his music language (without really wanting to) all the stuff he hears around him. this is perhaps what elliott does too and it is certainly what arnold does - but they all do it in an inclusive way so that their own assimilation of all those different languages is 'right'. it is 'right' because they are poets (artists). is that then what the artist is called to do: to assimilate? to take clashing languages and assimilate them?

I have to understand that it is necessary to speak many languages.

when jesus says 'man does live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God' isnt he actually talking about this problem of language? daily life language, about shopping and the weather, is not enough for us as 'spiritual beings' (ie made in the image of God).

but why then are the psalms not enough for me? why the music?
because I need to create perhaps? because the psalms are already there and all I can do is say them but I need to be creating as well - another essential aspect of spiritual being?
this is a minefield:
is 'being creative' necessarily about communication? does an artist create because he needs to be 'listened to' or because he simply needs to 'be creative'?
when confronted with a piece of art people 'listen in' ('appreciate') perhaps less to understand and more to 'enjoy' ('participate in')the act of creation itself. . . . we listen to italian opera and might enjoy it (I say 'might') despite it being 'unintelligible' . . .

which brings me back to my own problem with my music: the search for meaning overrides anything else and so I am constantly doubling back into the crisis over languages instead of just 'singing'.
which brings me out more or less where I started doesnt it?