teasing the moon

Girls with wind in their hair    -   Tor-Arne Moen

Norwegian, b. 1966 -

Girouard Avenue and Sherbrooke Street  -  Philip Surrey , 1971

Canadian , 1910-1990

Simen Johan (Norwegian, b. 1973)

Emma Amos (African-American ,1937 - 2020)

Secrets (4 parts), 1981

My speech impediment is not caused by the way tongue moves, by my vocal cords, my teeth, or my lips. My speech impediment is not even caused by my brain and the physiological way it interacts with my vocal organs.

Of course the speech of everyone who speaks vocally is caused by their lips, tongue, vocal cords, brain etc. But none of these things are what cause a speech impediment.

My speech impediment is caused by the way I speak being heard and understood as abnormal. As unfortunate. As inferior. My speech impediment only exists because our society has already decided that the way my lips and tongue move, the way my voice sounds, is not as good as the way that other people’s lips and tongues move, the way that other people’s voices sound. Society has just assumed that the mere differences in how I speak—the halting and repeated sounds, the fact that I take a little longer than those considered “normal”—must be bad differences.