Less Talking is Nothing
An essay on the nature of Less Talking and an argument for the case of 'empty labels'
Less Talking is a work under-construction, ever-expanding and ever adapting. It was designed to grow because it is an expression of community, which is itself energy- an undying concept (I’ll explain this one later). It is also by design an empty label:
Labels are not inherently bad since categorisation can offer necessary clarity as to what things are and are not. This makes labels both pragmatic and empowering in that individuals can use them to package both the ontology of things dear to them and the practices that are necessary for those ontologies to thrive. In doing so, labels become cultural preservatives, providing structure to different elements of society in a way that becomes more unshakable the more they are used. Names are labels so when a person suffers a political death, movements like #saytheirname emerge to remind us that the deceased person was a human being and that they had a life, a set of behaviours and characteristics that we should define them by as opposed to any external labels created by others to contradict these ontologies or dehumanise them.
‘Less Talking’ is a label too in that it points towards something that exists and it protects it from external categorisation, but is a label unlike others in that it does not point to a fixed set of ontologies. The preservation of ontologies through labels helps in the crystallisation, or more aptly the immortalisation of things. By repeating labels- incorporating them into our vocabularies- we allow their legacies to live forever through language. In doing so, we also cement their ontologies in our memory because the labels become constant reminders of them. So labels are perfect for preservation, but they are dangerous for growth because the ontology of things becomes fixed within these labels. The process by which labels preserve things creates a fixed image of what they should be and a fixed image of things they should not be, making their empowering qualities restrictive. Less Talking was designed to grow- for it to attract larger communities within it over time and for it to change in attentive response to the changes in this community- so it cannot be a fixed thing.
We can think to Grime as a perfect example of how restrictive labels can be. At its birth, it was an expression of culture foremost, uniting London's black youth in the sentiments and feelings that they shared in. It didn’t point to a set of ontologies, so the label of Grime was encompassing of many different elements. It was a way of talking, a way of thinking, a style of fashion, a style of partying, a style of music etc. Even the music was not clearly defined: the cacophonous clang of faux Asian sounds on Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Brand New Day’ was completely different to the melancholy electronica of Bashy’s '4 o’clock’. Grime was not something fixed, but as time progressed, the label did begin to point to a set of ontologies. It became a technical label which pointed to fixed tempos, specific flows and heavily-defined production styles. Thus, whilst the culture continued to grow (the culture that Grime birthed became popular for people of diverse ethnic backgrounds in and outside of London) Grime itself remained fixed within these labelled ontologies. Its growth, which birthed (to some extent) Drill, UK Hip Hop and heavily influenced other UK music genres, was not seen as compatible with Grime, so the genre suffered a lack of appeal and became stagnant.
Less Talking is all encompassing of growth and change on the contrary since it does not have a set of ontologies to point to. It is like Grime at its birth: an undefined cultural phenomenon, which manifests itself in diverse ways. It focuses on the emotion of joy, the experience of self-awareness and the pull of togetherness to function. The practices that are regular occurrences at Less Talking- audiences sharing their emotions, DJ sets and live music performances- are all done with the intention of expressing emotions and stimulating feelings rather than just being done for the sake of being done. None of them are inherently necessary: they can be stripped away; replaced and new actions can be brought into Less Talking because the actions’ only purpose are to serve an end other than itself. They are not the ontology.
If Less Talking was conceived only as an event of DJ sets, live music, art and conversation, the event itself would become a meaningless ritual of practices; there would be no appeal to the event other than to observe the practices. Once people observe, they have no reason to re-experience it. I held two nights where I explicitly used the label Less Talking this summer (Less Talking Brighton and Gabriel Dedji presents… Tamilore Awosile at Crouch End) and two other events that embody the Less Talking label (The Books Dem rooftop cookout and Black Head Students’ Network Talent Show). Despite all these events happening in rapid succession, each of them attracted a nice turnout and an engaged audience because people were consistently aware of the community and togetherness that they were a part of. They enjoyed it. As a result, new faces and new audiences came to each event and Less Talking responded attentively.
The Crouch End night is a great case study of this. This was a more intimate night than Brighton since it was mainly family and friends that were present. Most of the audience had a personal connection to either me or Tamilore, so it was structured to complement this nature. Where Less Talking Brighton had taken a multisensory nature, capturing people’s attentions through visual art, performance and food and drink, Crouch End was purely a night of musical performance. Where Less Talking Brighton saw me engaging with the audience openly, asking them to share their thoughts and feelings for others to hear, Crouch End saw me encouraging the audience to write their thoughts as notes that I would save in a cardboard box. The simplicity and privacy of these changes complemented the intimacy of the show more and it created a singular focus on the music as opposed to anything else- it instilled togetherness. The comments that were left in the box were profound and reflected the feelings that they felt within them. They showed people explicitly describing their joy at the performances and the impact that the idea of Less Talking had on them. It was through a lack of ontology and a malleable emptiness that Less Talking was able to grow like this and achieve the togetherness and joy that it sought out. There were some simpler changes that were more successful too. The DJ at Crouch End played afrobeats and highlife, which the audience loved because they were mainly West African youth, whereas the DJs at Less Talking Brighton played House and Jazz.
Less Talking is experimental for these reasons, constantly changing the actions that it comprises of as to keep it alive and as a way to engage actively with the feelings and emotions that it focuses on. In this sense, Less Talking works as an ethos most aptly: there is a spirit to this thing which is felt whenever the Less Talking label is triggered, but it is not a defined thing; it always changes and yet, the feelings and sentiments at its core always stay the same. This ethos is life and the actions of Less Talking are life preserving- not ontology preserving. This is the nature of the empty label. It is a label that is empowered by feelings, but it does not point to any concrete aspects of being which means that it is not clearly definable. As is shown by the #saytheirname movement, labels are great at preserving things which have been, crystallising them in language and memory, but as is shown through the history of grime, such labels do not preserve things in practice or allow them to grow- so they do not truly live.
Life is empty: empty labels allow things to live and grow actively in their conceptions; labels that are not empty- ontological labels- keep things from growing and living. Amusingly, the symbol that I think best represents this is Christ’s empty tomb. The empty tomb is used by Christians worldwide to point to hope, enlightenment, joy and a plethora of other sentiments which manifest themselves differently within each individual. The tomb itself is a void, and it is this absence that triggers all of these sentiments and allows the concept of Christ to be a living one for all Christians. In the same way, we must think of labels as tombs. Only when they are empty do they symbolise life. When they are not empty, they symbolise the inability to grow in practice. We can poetically call this death.
Christian imagery is massively helpful in the understanding of Less Talking in that images of hope in Christianity often utilise absence (e.g. the empty cross, the empty tomb, the absence of a biological father at Jesus’s birth, the disciples without Jesus at Pentecost) just as Less Talking is characterised by the absence of ontology.
In conclusion, Less Talking is an ethos of joy, togetherness and self-awareness. It uses certain ontological features to embody this ethos, but these features are never fixed and almost always changing. There is no definition because to define things is to condemn them to an end, but to not define them is to allow them to grow and live. Less Talking aims to live, so it does.
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