On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry by William H. Gass

interchangeable like turds, for one stool is as good as another in the democracy of the mouth.
    Crude as they are, such cases force us to distinguish not only between use and mention, as logicians normally do, but also between these and what might be called simple utterance or outcry.
    Key chains, drapes, and dishes are used, wagonwheels, tuning forks, whistles, words. What else are they for? Drapes hang heav-ily from their bars. Chains key. Wheels turn. Pass the butter.
    Take off your bra. The Blue Ridge Mts. are in Virginia. Or they may instead be mentioned, as I shall this moment mention
    'swive,' a term which Barth has beautifully blown his breath upon and thus attempted to revive. I, myself, have had no success with 'grampalingus,' 'meatus foetus,' or 'mulogeny'—a sentence which, if you could not see the quotes around the words you might think meant I'd tried them all and failed. Well, no one listens to what they see.
    In babyhood and through moist infancy, the penis is a 'pee-pee.' When worn by boys, it becomes a 'peter' or a 'dick.' Later we refer to the instrument (even our own, and not, alas, unhappily) as a 'whang.' We call it a 'dong.' We say it is a 'dork.' Imagine. Meanwhile, the lovely Irish 'langolee,' or 'wheedledeedle,'
    my concoction, get no backers. Though 'bluebeard' and 'blue-skin' have once upon a time been used, no one is forgiven. Still, in a world of prick-skinning women, perhaps a twanger is what one needs. These days are drear. However . . . 'fuck,' in 'go fuck a duck,' is neither used nor mentioned; it is merely uttered. These

    'fucks' are pharic like the delivery of 'good morning,' the wearing of evening clothes, giving of handshakes, painting of smiles, adding the complimentary close.
    Most of the time we are content to cry out 'fuck!' as if pinched, but the function of our wall words in slightly more elaborate curses, such as:
    may your cock continue life as a Canadian, or
    may the houseflies winter over in your womb, or
    may you be inhaled by your own asshole,
    is more complex. Although each expression is merely uttered (curses without a curse, they contain only archery and cleverness like a purse full of chocolates and needles), every element has an internal use, so that we can say that single words can be used within mention or mentioned within use, mentioned in an utterance or uttered in a mention, uttered in an utterance, mentioned in a mention, and so on like a fugue. This cleverness in one sense mitigates the shock by calling attention to the quirks and capabilities of the mind that shapes the mouth that makes them, just as those obnoxious little jokes which leap like startled frogs into the center of every conversation do, or those pointless puns some damply nervous souls are obsessively driven to compose.
    In any case, their being lies in their occurrence.
    It is not alone words about which these distinctions can be profitably made, and I hope the difference will help interpret many of my earlier remarks. If I shed my clothes to make love or take a shower, I am using my nakedness; if I wear a daring gown, I may be mentioning it; but the bared behinds on the modern stage aren't mentioning themselves, nor are they ever used.
    They are merely uttered. I know situations where the devil has appeared with no more function than a shout. This is often the role of the star who doesn't do anything but twinkle. In the Cantos, Pound only mentions his Chinese words, he rarely really uses them. Although the sexual descriptions of the pornographer are frankly employed to produce erection, and the sex in Kinsey or Kraft-Ebbing is mentioned for the sake of study, the sex in Oh, Calcutta! is simply sworn.
    The blue list with which I began was celebrational. I did not use the phrase 'blue devil' but I was delighted to mention it: blue line, blue note, blue plate. If I were uttering these words (as I am presently trying to formulate the distinction), I would not particularly care what they meant, I would