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This episode of Unspoken Words was recorded live at the Falmouth Townhouse, during one
of the Telltales evening of storytelling and poetry.
For some years I have secretly fantasized
about the term 'wetware' - ever since someone explained to me that it was a latest thing
kind of conveniently modern way to refer to 'the body' especially in relation to all the
other 'ware' things that have become integral parts of our lives.
Hardware, Software, Firmwear tupperware, outerware underwear those sorts of things,
and, like so much of what we can't seem to help associating things with, 'wet ware' -for
all its post human philosophical attributes - is often simply used as a catch-all innuendonic
term for *** kinds of technologically enhanced 'sex'.
'innuendonic'? I hear someone say, because it's a term I just made up,. Its like being
sardonic, or ironic, if you're inserting insinuating double entendre's willy nilly so to speak,
then you're being 'innuendonic' -we can all give it a try after the show -
Anyway, because I can't help thinking that if I were to say I am going to do an Unspoken
Word episode on the word 'sex,' it would be seen as an example of the lowliest of low
exploitations, a brazen attempt at attracting attention to myself on the one hand, and just
plain embarassing for a person of my standing in the community on the other, besides which,
who would want to listen anyway, me going on about sex and how I haven't had it for
...
Oh ,yeah, that was the real reason I decided not to do a show about the word 'sex', because
it needs more research,
So I though well 'wet' then, 'wet' in its innuendonic usage when we all know that I
am really alluding to 'sex'... Nod, wink, etc...
Sex has been with us only slightly less longer than the more primitive living cell formations
that life first began in, ones that simply split or reproduced 'asexually' or by 'mitosis',
meaning without any 'sex' at all. These un sexed unmating ungendered but not necessarily
unimportant early forms of life first began to populate the planet billions of years ago.
They were the proto-cell life forms that formed our planet's atmosphere - with the exhaust
gases and waste products of their lives - which means we didn't so much form out of
primordial soup, as from primordial pooh, gases and elements which pretty much still
surround us to this day, where life continues to evolve in an atmosphere comprised of the
farts and excretions of single celled life forms.
Having said that, many of those early primordial life forms are still with us, which just goes
to show that sex isn't everything, plenty of life forms are quite happy being single
parents, splitting into two of exactly the same single cells, which become four, four
eight, eight 16, 16 - 64, indicating that sex - for all it may be more fun than mitosis,
or cell division - isn't necessarily necessary to life as we know it.
Somewhere along the line, sex and the first mating rituals developed way back in the midst
of all that primordial excrement and effluent. In fact Determinist protocell anthropologists
argue that, if sex hadn't evolved some bored single cells probably would have invented
it anyway.
"Hey man hows' it going?" 'Oh, ok I guess, sliming along you know, but
I don't know...' 'What's up?'
'I don't know, its just so repetitive - splitting up, then splitting up again its all so casual,
you know? what does it all mean?... isn't there more to life than mitosis?'
'The more the merrier I say! ... oh hang on, I feel a cell division coming o ooooh ouchhhh
ahhhh sorry you were saying?'
'Listen, I need to level with you, nuclei to nuclei.'
'Sure, we're all in this primordial ooze together...' 'Would it be crazy for me to say that I can't
get you out of my cytoplasm? I mean it's like you've invaded my cell wall or something...
I just...I just think we could make beautiful organisms together...'
'Gee, I don't know...Hey! Don't do that - hey! get off my membrane there! We're supposed
to split not merge, Stop it! Somebody get this genetic maniac off of me! Stop! Don't!
stop... don't stop...'
Meaning the first sex act was not a fruity product of Adam getting a banana over some
melons that Eve grabbed off the only tree in god's entire allotment that had a sign
nailed to its trunk reading 'you can have anything you want in paradise, except! the
fruit off this tree, this means you and your boyfriend, both of whom -incase you need reminding-
I made out of mud.'
No, the first sex act was engaged in long before, in some forgotten time zone of the
past by two consenting paramecium sized same sex, transexual hermaphrodite lady-boy bacterium.
"I couldn't tell man !I swear!"
And maybe that's where 'wetware' got started, and today well, we're sort of how far its
got. And how we evolved from one sex to plural
sexes may never be precisely known, however, we are mostly wet, we are liquid people. At
the end of the day, some 80% of the body is comprised of water.
And we like our fluid relationship with the world the flows, sepage, sweat, perspiration,
rush of blood, waves of emotion, eyewatering, mouthwatering, when the body gets going things
can get very messy.