Confusion - Cantonese Tonal (nonsense) Poem

This piece was created for another class last term. The question I raise is when does language become merely sound and lose its meaning? In Chinese language, a lot of characters share the same pronunciation. So we can combine different characters in a way that they sound identical but they have totally different meanings. Also, since Chinese is a tonal language, by simply changing the tone can change the meaning drastically, or just turn the whole thing into nonsense.

Among the 40 lines, only the last line has real meaning. All the rest are the permutations of tonal changes.

Discussion (originally posted by Marc)

• Were the tonal choices based on semantics or sound?
• Meaning keeps changing through the tonal variations - some have a specific meaning, others are nonsense, but the variations are so subtle that one can mistake sense for nonsense (on a sonic basis) very easily.
• The contradiction between the written sign (grapheme) which has a meaning, and the pronunciation / tonal articulation which turns the written sign into sound nonsense. The written and the oral keep bouncing off of each other, creating different kinds of confusions/contradictions...
• At first, one has the impression of hearing the same sounds repeated over and over again. As one progresses and becomes more sensitive to the material (because we have heard it repeatedly), one starts to notice the subtle shifts in tone. (Think of Steve Reich's Come Out, which is actual repetition in contrast...)

Recording of performance

Explanation