#4 The Unlanguage
I speak the Unlanguage, the others speak it too;
You skip our gentle voices; to you, our story is a ruse.
I speak the Unlanguage, the language of the true;
It is concealed deep inside me, how can you think you speak it too?
My voice only a thread, you effortlessly ignore;
But the rope of language is a merciful saviour to those who implore.
It heeds no one else but the hanging men who hope, in pleading tones they sing;
It dreams of nothing else but enjoining the hands of those whose unheard yearns ring.
The Unlanguage is whole, sweet in its harmony;
Taunts do not taint it, pain does not stain it.
My bloody tears are droplets, droplets in the ocean;
The Unlanguage hides them, gathering in its whirling motion.
Silent in whistling breaths, a roar bashes beneath;
Like waves crashing the surface, a tale throbs underneath.
The Unlanguage violently accumulates, tranquil from afar;
Silently breeding, its eventual release inevitable to leave scars.
It does not argue with the tide, nor battles the raging sun;
The oppressors incessantly strike, one day, the battle will be won.
The Unlanguage is sweet but bitter to the oblivious;
Don’t swagger with imposition, else you’ll make it obvious.
The Unlanguage repels coddle, it turns away to the crude;
Yet its arms embrace the authentic, who walk their intentions nude.
The Unlanguage is free, but unlike the freed, it despairs;
The seekers may seek it, and let it out if they dare.
If they dare, they must hold, the crown of humility,
The sceptre of empowerment, the majesty of humanity.
Our filtered narratives, myopic insurmountability;
Indeed they are encumbrances, we simply usurped superiority.
Let the Unlanguage dismantle them, they hinder our uniqueness;
What we should really call: our incompleteness.
The essence of journalism is not the power to storytell, but the power to discover. It is not the power to impose, but the power to uncover. Like a crop that is grown, harvested, cleaned, processed, packaged, transported and then brought to the consumer, our journalistic content is no different. An artless quote is processed into a narrative, elevated into a collective view, transformed into an international story, and finally, instrumentalised — weaponised rather, into an argument backing a political theme.
Over the past decades, journalism has been upended — from a public merit good to a commercial product. In this age, investigation is no longer about discovery. Rather, journalism is now a form of procurement. This model doesn’t unearth hidden perceptions, it hunts for narratives, buys cheap fuel for political fires, all while boasting journalistic integrity, uniqueness and legitimacy. And where the fast-changing rays of politics and public opinion don’t shine, stories go unheard, ignored and purposefully neglected. Those in society that we ignore: they speak the Unlanguage. The Unlanguage is such that it cannot be lured out, nor can a narrative be imposed upon it. It is only accessible through earnest journalism — that seeks a perspective for the fundamental importance of a single untouched viewpoint in itself.
We are all journalists. We find information from our own sources, and categorise it with our own idiosyncrasies, philosophies and stereotypes. We all suffer from our own confirmation biases, bombarding ourselves with self-validating media. It is not in corporate nature to provide us with balanced opinions, rather, the onus is on us to talk, watch, listen to someone new. Let us try to hear the unheard, and in doing so, learn a glimpse of the Unlanguage.