Silent scream

Silent Scream. Julie Clarke (2011)

It begins somewhere, in the gut or the spine, in the brain stem at the base of the skull. Makes its way into the chest and throat and then bursts forth. Sometimes there's no sound, it's an inner scream that can't expel itself into the outside world, it just lodges in the jaw and fixes the mouth in a hideous grimace. The teeth are always involved, they add a little edge to the feeling, the lips stretched tightly across that worn down bite, the nostrils a little flared. The tongue appears to have no role in this audible or inaudible expression, which catches itself on the upper palate. I find myself sometimes in a scream. It's more a measure of frustration, as if I must make some sound and then, when the sound refuses to manifest it's enough to just to let the body articulate the shriek. Innocent X is doing it amidst ecclesiastical finery, but it's Munch's scream that depicts the true anxiety, echoed in the distorted, angular face and dizzying landscape. Is ET Spielberg's scream - the anxiety of the alien who wants to phone home and yet Earth is where his heart is, connected in a psychic way to Elliot, the child who will die if he doesn't let go? And let go we must - sometimes even before we get involved, and it's the inner scream that will enable us to continue.