27Percent 9/11

          Ever since our class this past Wednesday, I kept thinking of Barthes concept of tmesis. The idea of how we are able to fill gaps in words, texts and ideas kept running through my mind throughout the weekend. I usually try to do post-class blogs whenever I find time on Fridays, but I decided to give myself the weekend to ponder the concept of tmesis and see how it occurs regularly in my life. How we fill in these gaps is completely constructed by pure life experiences and what we know. Barthes explains tmesis as humans interjecting because we know the meaning of these gaps that need to be filled. 

          Two very apparent instances of tmesis occurred within the past 24 hours. This Saturday I went to St. Augustine with two of my very best friends from school for the last stop of the Mumford and Sons tour. This was my first time seeing Mumford in concert, so it was one of the most spectacular musical experiences of my life. During one of their songs, lead singer Marcus Mumford stopped singing and held his microphone out to the crowd and the audience replied by singing the lyrics of the song that he did not. I performed tmesis by filling in the silent gap left by the lead singer by my experience of knowing the song lyrics. The second instance occurred this morning when my friends and I were telling the rest of our teammates about the concert and how amazing it was. As we were telling stories, one of us would begin and pause and the others would be able to fill the gap about the same story through experience. Saussure refers to tmesis as a linguistic phenomenon and I couldn’t agree more. The fact that we as humans have the ability to fill gaps when the “body pursues its own ideas” (111) is as Barthes describes “the pleasure of the text” (111).