{ mouth }
I hate the idea of putting these preformed gestures on the tip of my tongue or through my lips or through the inside of my mouth, forming sounds to approximate something that’s like a cyclone, or something that’s like a flood, or something that’s like a weather system that’s out of control, that’s dangerous, that’s alarming.
– Weight of the Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz
The mouth is the upper opening of the digestive tract and enables, among other things, food intake and voice production. Enclosed by the lips, it contains the tongue and teeth, which allow chewing and taste perception, both important to the growth and protection of the human body. But beyond its biological functions, the mouth is central to communication, perhaps a cultural function: while the voice originates in the throat, the tongue, lips, and jaw shape speech and produce its range of sounds. Thus, the mouth holds taste, sensation, and contains living sensory organs. The mouth’s ability to sense and to sound.
There are some similarities to the concept of culture, at least as I was taught to understand it. Culture, in some ways, has to do with how we thrive: economically, psychologically, physically, and socially. In our bodies, along with the mouth, we are able to be in communion with our environment. The mouth is able to sense what is nourishing.
At the edges of the digestive and diasporic systems, there is sensing. This sensing manifests as culture in both instances, with particular foods holding visceral weight for the taste in the mouth, and in the case of the diaspora, a room being inscribed with ontologies from a homeland’s past. The mouth, however, does not sense alone. Taste is entangled with the internal ecology of the body, like the gut microbiome. These microbial communities both shape and are shaped by diet. They influence cravings and even the pleasure or aversion associated with certain foods. What feels good on the tongue is not only a cultural memory but also a biological alignment, a feedback loop between body and environment. Taste becomes a kind of living archive of adaptation, as the body learns through repeated encounters what sustains it. This biological attunement parallels the cultural work of the diaspora. Just as the microbiome must recalibrate in a new ecological context, so does the diasporic community.
