I began to think about how our first accountability is in the way we exercise the actions of our voices . . .

How might we find a way to speak together?
to be a chorus of speakers summoning together a need to say?
and I tried to imagine what that space might be and what would be said? . . . 

This question . . . 
What is speaking? . . .
What is this orphic machine of the mouth opening and closing to sound? . . .

To the vowels and consonants of letters filling into words and on down the road to sentences and meanings . . .

And looming even larger in a haunting sort of way . . .

What is being said?
What are the forms and possibilities of saying? . . .

And so as I started to think about joining you . . . . 

To think about the space of someone speaking and someone listening / a situation of response . . .
I began to think about words . . .
What can words do?
How can words be acts of making? . . .

And . . .

I began to ask myself what words need to be said now . . .
What can words say now . . .
Through what process might I find words that are up to the task of all the things that need saying . . .

I began to wonder how words might become the material of my making.

— Ann Hamilton