Black and grey photograph of a block lettering tattoo on the inner forearm near the wrist, reading WORDS FAIL with MUSIC SPEAKS upside down beneath it.

Words fail, music speaks lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a man's inner forearm near the wrist, with two lines of bold sans-serif capital letters in black ink. The top line reads WORDS FAIL and the second line, set upside down beneath it, reads MUSIC SPEAKS. The image is in greyscale with soft lighting and the text is sharp and centred across the forearm.

Lettering Forearm Word Music Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ilse,

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The council has finally agreed to shut the speaking hall on Deck Nine, and I thought you should hear it from me rather than the notice board. Forty years of translation work and it comes down to a laminated sheet and a bored clerk. The old dialect of the Halden families has eleven living speakers now, and four of them are under six and only sing it. I sat with the youngest on Tuesday. She could not tell me what the words meant, but she knew exactly where the breath went.

Something happened in the choir room last week that I want to describe while I still remember it properly. Marta Oyelaran, who has conducted the Wardens' Chorus since before the hull repairs, stood at the far end of the long table with the score turned round to face me. Everything printed on it was backwards from where I sat. She had written the lyric line in the old script upside down so that she could read it from her side, and I, from mine, could only see the shapes lean. I asked her to explain. She just tapped the staves and began to hum, and by the third bar I knew the phrase. It was the one for grief that has nowhere to go.

So I am learning to listen the way she taught me, not to translate, which is the thing I was trained to do and keep failing at. Some sentences do not survive the crossing. I have stopped apologising for that in my notes.

Come and hear the chorus before the hall closes. Bring nothing to write with. I will meet you at the lift.

Yours, Sol