Layers,

 

I want to speak about the various layers of my Embodied Language (EL). Naturally, my EL was made possible by my Disembodied Language (DL). However, my DL was preceded by a stage, in which I was without language. Every human being is born without language and grows up in a verbal community. The baby only hears the surrounding sounds and imitates these sounds until he or she is forming his or her first words, such as Mamma or Pappa. Once that happens, there is great delight, as the child has taken its first steps of his or her verbal development. This switch from being pre-verbal to verbal, is a major milestone in our lives. Later, much later, when we switch from DL to EL, we switch back from the being verbal, to not being verbal, as we are able to let go of our language during EL.    

 

I am once again reminded of what my mother told me, a few days, before I emigrated to the United States, in 1999. She took me aside and said, that before I go, there was something, she had to tell me. I was feeling kind of alarmed and instantly knew, she was about to tell something very serious. Although she was going to tell me, she hesitated, but she braised herself and told me the following story. I am the oldest son, the third child of a family of six children. Similarly to my two older sisters, I was born at home with the help of midwife. In The Netherlands, it is very common for babies to be born this way.

 

The midwife, whose name was also Anna – like my mother – was a cheery friend and a former colleague, from an earlier time, that my mother, as a young woman, had been working at a big department store. She was always singing and was single and independent. In other words, the woman, who had supported my mother, while giving birth to her first two daughters, had always reminded my mother of a brief period – right after WOII – that she was free and without the burden of having to care for her big family, which, unfortunately, would weigh heavier and heavier on her, as the years went by. My mother felt very comfortable and confident with her friend-midwife, and I was to be born, in the same way as my older sisters. However, days before my birth, Anna died in a car-accident, leaving my mother bereaved.

 

As my mother told me, that the new midwife, who was a young, inexperienced, impatient woman, she and I cried. We both knew, how the loss of her dear friend had set the stage of my life. Surely, I was surprised to hear, she had been keeping this story from me for so many years. My mother expressed a sense of shame about not being able to love me enough, as she felt so saddened. However, she felt, I must have heard Anna sing, while I was still in her womb and when I came out, the voice and the positive energy, I had – like her – enjoyed listening to so much, was gone. I cried a lot as baby, and it was difficult for my mother to calm me down. At the time of my departure to the United States, I had already spent many years, giving sessions and workshops about listening to your voice, while you speak. My sensitivity, to the sound of the human voice, according to my mother, was the result of the situation in which I had been born.

 

After immigrating, in the first couple of years, I made many audio recordings, on which I talked with myself in Dutch and in English. Only now, do I realize, how incredibly important it has been – and still is – for me, to speak, first, in Dutch and, then, in English, about my language experience. And, of course, everything I have written, was always preceded by my speaking and listening. Currently, I write on this blog and have returned to a steady speaking with myself, because I make video-recordings on my You Tube channels (Maximus Peperkamp and maximuspeperkamp-hw8sw). I feel so fortunate to be able to express myself in two languages. My mother’s tongue, my Dutch, represents my emotional history with my language, but my English refers to my verbal maturity, my reason, my intellect, as I became an educated person and have achieved the Master of Arts and Master of Science in Clinical Psychology. I am so grateful for being able to explore and acknowledge all these different layers of my language. It seems as if my English translates my Dutch experience, in the same way, that my EL translates my DL experience.

 

It has taken me a long time, before I was able to have ongoing EL. For many years, I kept having episodes of DL, in which I again had problems. Currently, my EL is steady and, as I have always said, this is my Language Enlightenment (LE). I couldn’t have come to my ongoing EL – which is my LE – without endlessly going back and forth between my DL and EL and by acknowledging, that I wasn’t listening to myself again and again. I couldn’t help it, as I was conditioned that way. My dear mother has given me gift, by telling me her story, because it made me understand, why I am the way I am. She knew, I needed to know. Also, my dear father, who loves classical music, has played a big role, in how I came to be so concerned about language, as he told me, over and over again – in spite of all his inadequacies – that talking is the most important thing in life.