iilwimi lipsing is about a politics of not-translating and listening with a feminist ear which can also be an eye, skin or fist.
I like how it sounds a bit like wimmin. Wimmin-ing. It’s queer and i and i, like we. It’s lots. Very plural-y. And very very and so. Sounds like lips and ellipses and singing and kissing and something about size, like a thing that is small and growing. It’s funny how ppl get upset from internet comments about bad lipsing. Lipsing is verby it’s doing. It’s now. It’s painting the chin and cheeks so the lips stand out. It’s a tongue in another mouth. To go inside your body. The i’s are quite wavy i and i and i and i and i and i. It’s slow then it’s fast. I’m thinking about the shapes the sound makes my mouth. what words do with me. ii is air muscled out. When did I suck that air iin even? iilwimi lipsing is nice to say softly against the hand. Rushy.
iilwimi lipsing is a doing thing, an action that needs examples. It is not-translating because the work of translating is mostly carried by ppl who see and touch both sides of things for ppl who see one ( ). iilwimi lipsing is broken bridge-ing. It doesn’t do the work of making ppl comfortable. Nottranslating doesn’t privilege English english, it doesn’t subtitle non-white / queer english with a capital letter. It’s more easy to listen nicely without subtitles.
iilwimi lipsing is languages sitting alongside each other, rubbing each other up. It isn’t keeping boundaries. It creates its own communities of knowing and not-knowing and not-knowing as a space to learn ( ). Speaking and writing is together. iilwimi lipsing is speaking in a language you know and it’s speaking in a language you don’t know. It is two tongues touching. It’s touching writing.
The way them dey talk am go make you know the sound. You can use your eyeear to listen. It’s about fresh eyes. Looking at the shape sound of the stuff you don’t know. Training the eyes not to skip over but to glean. Only so much is glean-able also so you can’t have it. It’s about not-knowing and being vulnerable.
We’re writing in english, aware that english isn’t always a home. And it’s true that we tend to look at, rather than through, non-normative writing. We want to hold it with attention, not hold it up for display. We can say what it’s not and we don’t mean it to be oppositional only but about possibilities. Awkwardly we’re doing this from not-knowing. We try editing with trust and care, through listening. And a thing about care is it isn’t reciprocal or equal. I care to you ( ).
A desire not to say the words but also say them at the same time; to silently mouth witch word on the page. Not oh nouns, instead, bluddier. Ordinary things raised upon wingèd shoulders, beyond the taught sirfaces of my body. Wether 2 meat another body’s i eye went to Paris and sore the Mona Lisa. I works twice as hard so that eye can see. Giotto’s perfect red o, redder and redder, not not-like Oken’s 0, just circle-y-er. Even when you sit down. Between anus and trousers, there usually remains a distance in the in between, in-between, in the in-between. IIdir. The gaps between your fingers and toes.
Not a slash; an open border, a wound, a drawing, a map. A gap. Between your upper front teeth. What words are too many for one. “E bo lan lo?” A subtitle that isn’t there. Paper-showing-through translating the translated and not-translating the not-translated. Speaking with one’s mouth closed, ‘Am I gone’ or ‘am I going?’ A kind of seeing that touches.
The back of my neck. Making-kin, between distance points. When things contain a hxstory that can’t be collapsed into the present, when so much has already been said. this bridge called my back. Thirty three ten drip up your sleeves. Uphila ngevibe, yonke into iright. Thumb on the sucker swipe the lolly, swipe right‐ah. She used to call me on my selula selula selula.
A love language. Digging through the crates of history and honouring the dead. Whitney Houston. Esther Phillips. Diana Washington. Natalie Cole. Mary Wells. Tammi Terrell. Bessie Smith. Big Mama Thornton. Ma Rainey. Florence Ballard. Dorothy Dandridge. Marvin Gaye. Jimi Hendrix. Michael Jackson. Prince. Gil Scott-Heron. Donny Hathaway. Billie Holiday.
Text locks down; becomes image, a jpeg. A word that is plural but feels like a whole things. In the forest which rises. In the forest r i s i n g. Bacteria or bacterium breaking down must be hacked to be changed. The ad-hack-pac. Web-making moves and the messing up of categories. A scent heavier than air. Despite everything aber, remained our two bodies in their starting position.
Pointing at a tree because of green. In apfel the tongue is faster to reach the ‘e’ than in apple. The gesture makes a sound die fast. Contours that immer seemed like the finest haairs would break. To sagen etwas slightly elongated. A slash as signifier to the in-between space. Is it who / what? Bending but not breaking. Embedded too slow, or too fast. Erosion unveils over time. What feel-flows for I, doesn’t feel-flow for you and that is good to learn: our eyeear rhythms.
You is the I talking to itself. The bandit living between my front teeth. I doesn’t care about anyone on the receiving end of I’s speech bubble; she is the host. I and she is the same. When I shows my wounds to my search engine, it feels like you have a mouth but can’t speak. That tongues, my tongue, my tongue, that tongue, my tongue, the tongue, my tongue.Something to gather up: vocal project, like papers or files or recordings or drawings. It is also an action, a pushing forward. Staging is supporting is a view to talkabout. ‘Kiss to tell and between talking lips with the voice,’ or maybe ways we show love through being heard not seen.
Gewrit in predictive text is ‘He writes’. Concreting the raw stuff: lime putty, something written, horse dung, writ, soil, list, wig fibres, passage, shredded school uniforms, inscription, liquid soap and Saecierr in predictive text is ‘Saecierr’. Sea-ebbing; the retreat of the sea; where waves draw back and leave a passage, my ship. Letting things air out.
( ) Donna Kate Rushin The Bridge Poem
( ) bell hooks Teaching to Transgress
( ) Luce Irigaray I Love to You
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CONTINUE READING:
In the reading groups for the third issue: iilwimi lipsing we read Donna K. Rushin’s The Bridge Poem as well as Sara Ahmed’s Complaint.
Thinking about ‘listening as action’ we used the space of the reading group to try and collaboratively edit Harry Josephine Gile’s google doc ‘For the Record: Boring Sentences About My Gender’.