On Unusual Images & Listening to Words

"Images have power, as do words, and while most of the world lives daily in a bath of distraction (social media and otherwise) just now people are paying attention. They’re taking in unusual images. They’re listening to the words. They are being subjected to rhetoric, and not the sort of bombastic, spittle-flecked, politically-motivated and agenda-driven ranting that has become part of our daily dyspeptic fare but a rhetoric of reassurance, offered in calm tones by well-modulated voices — the rhetoric of continuance that is uniquely British in character and pronouncement. Emotion, the cheap and inefficient fuel that drives so much in the 21st Century, is here capped and tucked away. The trumpeters breathe out a fanfare; the Lord Mayor makes a pronouncement; the Prime Minister signs a form in silence. The new King speaks clearly, directly and with a gravity few have expected from him. While his speech is widely praised as being “note-perfect”, its greatest eloquence comes from his blue, narrow-set eyes, which lower at times with a touching humility that catches us off-guard, exposing a controlled yet naked grief each time they are raised. We are reminded that this new-yet-elderly king (who once referred to himself as an anachronism), is after all a man, and one with faults like all of us. He is a man who had a mother and a father who very likely failed him in many ways (as all parents do), giving him acquaintance with the ache and confusion of a love that comes with lessons, and even with expectations.

It is the love that trips all of us up, whether we are parents or children — the love that gives all of us a soft underbelly of vulnerability to each other and (if we are lucky) keeps us human, and humane. One needn’t be a monarchist in order to be moved by the recognizable signs of grief that are common to all of us."

From the Anchoress, on The Power and Value of Words, received via a recent link on Insty.  

Boris also managed to sort-of control his hair and deliver with dignity another set of appropriate and powerful words, in which he acknowledged personal grief, recognized the sense of loss the British Nation was experiencing, and conferred honor as he expressed his regard for the character of the Queen and the historical role she served in their Constitutional Monarchy.