The difference between written and spoken word is one that’s remarkable. Written word allows for one’s own interpretation, while spoken is the object of the speaker’s creation. This truly comes to light in Jordan Scott’s blert – when reading the poetry, it’s hard to picture the meaning of the odd combinations of words and sounds. But when you follow along the reading with the recording, it vastly changes the image of the text. More so, it creates the image – what was once a collection of mostly meaningless words is now a picture of sounds, sounds of, as Barthes put it, “the soul swelling or breaking”(506). The written text has a completely different meaning than the performed, since the stutter of the words gives it a completely different feeling and meaning. The stutter of Jordan Scott brings light to Cavarero’s theme of the “uniqueness of the voice” (521). In Scott’s poem “Two Cheeseburgers, French Fries and A Coke“, the performance and sound of the poem is what truly gives it its meaning, because without the stutter, there is no large significance in “cockeye bob, cocnut palm, cock-up, cocksucker, cock and bull, cock block, cockatoo, cock-of-the-walk, cockpit…” (45). The performance shows the tension that lives within the words and within his own hyoid bone, and shows the true voice of what the author intended, his individuality. The poetry combined with the recording shows his stutter in a positive way, in a way that celebrates the individuality of his own voice.
