…believing in the naturalness of your mother tongue shows a lack of serious engagement with language and belies the entire premise of modern literature. This is why I believe that existing outside of one's mother tongue is not exceptional, but simply an extreme version of the normal state of things.

In these kinds of performances, the reading and piano improvisation occur simultaneously. It's more than just a combination of words and music. When I'm reading, the area from my toes up to my throat is completely absorbed in and responding to the music; while the area from my tongue to my brain is pursuing the meaning of the words. Or maybe it's

The actors would repeat the sentence over and over again until it took on weight and, released from its obligation to deliver meaning, entered the realm of music. As I was showered with these fragments of language, I could take my time putting them together and slowly forming my own images. What began to materialize was not "meaning" in the usual

I'm inspired in different ways by languages that are more similar to Japanese and more distant. Sometimes when I look at Chinese, I'm overcome by an odd "lag," like I should understand it but I don't. It almost feels like I'm dreaming.

When my usual vocabulary is broken apart, and reconstituted, something new flickers forth. It feels like a flash in the dark, or a chain that had been wrapped around my brain snapping. Sometimes the joy I feel escapes me in a burst of laughter.

There is no objectively correct length for a sentence. The length of a sentence is one of its modes of expression. When I read Kleist's sentences, I feel a deep sense of joy that comes from the language permeating my brain. Any style that can absorb the trembling that arises from this joy and cause an earthquake that unsettles the landscape of

Maybe what I am really searching for is a language that has been freed of meaning altogether. Perhaps the reason why I ventured outside of my mother tongue to begin with, and why I keep seeking a world where multiple cultures overlap, is because I am searching for that state just before individual languages are dismantled—freed from their meanings

Some might argue that if I'm going to spend so many hours listening to a language I don't know, I may as well study it. But there's something priceless about that state of unknowingness.

I'm sure eventually I will study it, but I want to savor this suspended state of unknowingness for a while. How much creative stimulation can we draw from the state

When you are immersed in a foreign language for several years and are taking in a new language system, part of the theoretical basis for your mother tongue breaks down, changes form, and a new self is born. Some writers strongly dislike this immigrant condition, in which one's "original self" gets broken down.