Stephen Henderson

“Speech has only one dimension—its extension in time; writing has two dimensions; models have three; but only signed languages have at their disposal four dimensions—the three spatial dimensions accessible to a signer’s body, as well as the dimension of time. And Sign fully exploits the syntactic possibilities in its four-dimensional channel of expression.”
― Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices

“I was struck by the graphic quality, the fullness of her descriptions. Her parents spoke too of this fullness: “All the characters or creatures or objects Charlotte talks about are placed,” her mother said; “spatial reference is essential to ASL. When Charlotte signs, the whole scene is set up; you can see where everyone or everything is; it is all visualized with a detail that would be rare for the hearing.” This placing of objects and people in specific locations, this use of elaborate, spatial reference had been striking in Charlotte, her parents said, since the age of four and a half—already at that age she had gone beyond them, shown a sort of “staging” power, an “architectural” power that they had seen in other deaf people—but rarely in the hearing.”
― Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices

“This innate structure, this latent structure, is not fully developed at birth, nor is it too obvious at the age of eighteen months. But then, suddenly, and in the most dramatic way, the developing child becomes open to language, becomes able to construct a grammar from the utterances of his parents. He shows a spectacular ability, a genius for language, between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-six months”
― Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices

“Yesterday, before the meeting with U2, I took the precaution of putting tiny sections of each of the 44 pieces of music we have in hand on to a single tape. All this means is that when somebody says ‘Drum Loop 14’ and someone else says ‘Which one was that?’ I can readily go to it without having to change tapes (which takes only a few more seconds but is annoying). This little precaution (which however took me nearly three hours to put together beforehand) expedited the whole thing so much, and changed the whole quality of the decisions being made. I tend to spend more and more of my time thinking how to set up situations so that they work – so that they can actually take less and less time. My ideal is probably based on that story I heard years ago of how the Japanese calligraphers used to work – a whole day spent grinding inks and preparing brushes and paper, and then, as the sun begins to go down, a single burst of fast and inspired action.”
― Brian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary