Iran, Tehran – Salim Ghazi Saeedi, an Iranian musician, in course of composing his avant-prog instrumental album, namoWoman, realized that common languages are not sufficient to communicate about his music in album’s booklet. So he started developing a conlang (constructed language) named I3abEl. Here is the story:
Overwhelming in one of his no-word gardens of musical delights, Salim daydreamed: “Indeed no word is capable of communicating instrumental music, but are words themselves capable of communicating meaning at all? Lo no!” Then Salim pondered: “Men use language as an excuse to communicate… However that nothing quenches lust of human communication more than materialization of a new microcosm in flesh!”
Walking along with a row of erect trees in an autumn dawn, he turned his head to the east and the rising sun murmured in his ears: “By words I could never bare my soul to my readers – the way I do in music… But there had been times that people spake one language – one as in one rising sun.” Inspired from the one mythical language people of Babel spake, Salim started composing a conlang, to fulfill the coalition and universalization of Logos as people of Babel manifested during building the Tower of Babel. To this end – naturally – he had to bypass dualistic approach toward word construction. Despite writing poetry every now and then, in a dream Salim sermonized his image in the mirror: ” I despise words. And when I write words, it only happens during extreme times of paralysis and depression. My poetry I call inferno of Words…”
The concept of word in I3abEl is named “brick” – each mingling two opposite meanings of one concept; the way Tower of Babel was erected as the symbol of unity of its people’s desire and belief; that is Babel.
Climbing by innumerable spiral steps of Tower of babel a tablet reads on the wall:
Translation: I/You step/agonize on/under worlds/voids’ zeniths/nadirs and/nor perambulate/ruined ways/abysses innumerous/numerous. And/Nor found/lost worlds/voids erected/destroyed on/under my/your footsteps/oblivion.
The above translation is a mixture of two following truths:
#1: I stepped on worlds’ zeniths and perambulated ways innumerous. And found worlds erected on my footsteps.
#2: You agonized under voids’ nadirs nor ruined abysses numerous. Nor lost voids destroyed under your oblivion.
Visit www.salimworld.com/word/conlang to learn more about I3abElish language, check out the dictionary and alphabet and find out how you can contribute and spread the word.
Info on namoWoman album is available at: http://www.salimworld.com/album-namowoman.htm
Iran, Tehran – Rock music is of course not rooted in Iran, but the enticement within the genre has strikingly pierced Salim Ghazi Saeedi’s heart in his hometown. Living in a country with total domination of traditional culture, Salim has globally released his 4th album, Iconophobic. An album as a “strong statement from Saeedi on life in his home city of Tehran” (Steven Reid, Sea of Tranquility webzine, Sep 2010) or let’s say “a stream of conscious story without words.” (Christy Claxton, Stave Magazine, Sep 2010 )