Two languages cancel each other out, suggests Barthes, beckoning a third. Sometimes our words are few and far between, or simply ghosted.

It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up whatever you’re trying to say.

None of his words just came out anymore. Every syllable had to be weighed and measured. Each was calibrated to trigger laughter or to dominate or to earn him a dollar.

The idea was that when faced with abundance one should consume abundantly – an idea that has survived to become the basis of our present economy. It is neither natural nor civilized, and even from a ‘practical’ point of view it is to the last degree brutalizing and stupid.