The Shape of Words
The Radical Act of Circular Thinking in a World of Hot Takes
In Arrival, Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 meditative Sci-Fi film, the alien monolithic beings called Heptapods don’t speak in sounds. They communicate by composing an ensō of smoke.
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Villeneuve’s film presents a language composed entirely of circular, atmospheric glyphs - complete thoughts drawn in rings that defy linear structure. This reimagining of how language might look if it followed the geometry of wholeness instead of the grammar of sequence isn’t just an artistic flourish, it’s a philosophical poke in the ribs.
The Heptapods’ concept of language conveys the big picture from past to future - while simultaneously existing apart from a beginning to end, start to finish framework. Based on the geometry of wholeness rather than grammar of sequence, it is a language that challenges our fundamental assumptions about what it means to communicate.
In today’s world of non stop communications, it often seems a challenge to communicate. Multitasking, multiple channels, data overload and misinterpretation are but a few of the challenges circling around how we talk with and listen to others.
Do we take in the whole message through all our available senses - without judgement and with empathy? And can we learn to move past the if / then linear narrative of our shared experience?
The circle is one of the oldest symbols known to humanity. Found in petroglyphs, mandalas, and sacred diagrams, it predates alphabet and syntax. It is drawn in ritual, traced in meditation, and walked in pilgrimage. People talk in circles. I can write in circles. And it’s not only a shape, it’s a world view, containing all, and excluding nothing.
There’s a reason why different sacred traditions revolve around circular forms. For multiple theologies, the ouroboros, a serpent eating its tail, symbolizes eternal return. In Indian and Tibetan Buddhism cosmology, time is kalachakra, the Wheel of Time. The Celts spoke in spirals; the Navajo in sand circles. These traditions aren’t merely aesthetic, they express a philosophy. Bottom line - circles resist hierarchy. They decentralize the divine. And they hold the tension of opposites in graceful equilibrium.
The Heptapods’ script is composed of amorphous ink like rings. Each shapeshifting symbol is a sentence - a full thought dense with layered meaning and suspended in space. To understand them, the film’s protagonist played by must abandon linear logic and begin to think in circles.
Compare this to the ensō, the Zen Buddhist symbol drawn in a single brushstroke to represent enlightenment, impermanence, and the beauty of imperfection. While not message to decode; it is a lens with mirroresque qualities, all reflecting the internal state of its creator. To paraphrase Zen master D.T. Suzuki, when the Zen artist paints an ensō, he is expressing that unique limitless moment when the mind is free to let the body create. Like the Heptapod logograms, the ensō contains the fullness of expression in one unbroken gesture. It is not created sequentially, emerging instead as a synthesis of intention and intuition at a specific time.
Both circles are simultaneously symbols and actions. They resist fragmentation. They invite coherence. They offer a worldview in which time is layered, not linear - and where the truth is plural, not binary.
The idea that language shapes thought isn’t just poetic, it’s an area of research hovering around something called the Sapir - Whorf Hypothesis, a theory that suggests language doesn’t merely reflect reality, it structures it. It’s hardly settled science. But the film holds the concept close.
Benjamin Lee Whorf studied the Hopi language and argued that its less rigid, less segmented treatment of time resulted in a fundamentally different experience of reality. The Hopi do not even have a word for time. Again, hardly settled science and his conclusions are arguable, but the core idea remains that grammar and vocabulary shape perception.
Take color perception for example. Russian speakers distinguish between light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy) as separate basic colors. A 2007 study published in PNAS (Winawer et al.) found that Russian speakers were faster than English speakers at distinguishing between shades of blue, especially when the colors straddled the two linguistic categories. Language, in this case, sharpened visual discrimination.
In another study, Aboriginal speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre in northern Australia, a community of approximately 350 members who orient themselves using cardinal directions instead of egocentric words like “left” and “right,” displayed a heightened spatial awareness. They always knew which way was north, south, east, or west, even indoors or with eyes closed. Their language required a constant attunement to geography that shaped their cognition.
And consider time again: Mandarin Chinese speakers often conceive of time vertically, with “up” representing earlier events and “down” representing later ones. English speakers, by contrast, envision time moving from left to right. According to research by Boroditsky et al., these directional metaphors in language influence how people organize temporal events in their minds.
Arrival dramatizes this principle to the extreme. The protagonist of the movie doesn’t just learn the Heptapod language - she absorbs its structure. She begins to perceive time as the Heptapods do: non-sequentially - a past, present, and future collapsed into one. And that Amy Adams - she’s great. It’s a roller coaster.
Modern science backs this up. Bilingual cognition studies reveal that switching languages can alter decision making and emotional processing. A 2012 study in Psychological Science (Keysar et al.) found that bilinguals made more rational decisions in their non-native language, suggesting that language affects cognitive bias. "A 2015 study in Psychological Science (Athanasopoulos et al.) showed that bilinguals perceive time differently depending on the language they are using, with English and Greek prompting different spatial representations of time." English speakers would often view time horizontally (e.g., looking forward to the weekend), while Greek or Spanish speakers may also use vertical metaphors.
It’s a lot of anecdotal and more anthropology than linguistics but these findings suggest that perhaps language doesn’t just shape what we say. It influences how we see, feel and live.
In a culture obsessed with immediacy and output, circular language offers something radical - space.
To speak in circles is not to evade. It is to expand. It is to honor context, silence, ambiguity. To listen as deeply as one speaks. In a time of headlines and hot takes, the circle is a rebellion against reduction.
Circularity slows us down. It invites reflection. It centers presence. It says that meaning is not a fixed point, but a field.
Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, especially his concept of the “I-Thou” relationship, offers a parallel. In true dialogue, the other is not an object to persuade but a presence to encounter. Circular communication invites this kind of sacred reciprocity.
To think in circles is to remember that language is a living thing encompassing ritual and relationship that holds us and changes us in the process.
In his 1936 essay, “Language as Myth,” Ernst Cassirer expressed the thought that language was not merely a system of signs, it is the shaping of meaning. The circle embodies this idea. It is language as shape. Meaning as motion. Time as presence.
Whether in the brushstroke of a Zen monk, the glyph of an alien, or the rituals of our everyday speech, the circle endures as does the conversation.
The circle reminds us that to speak is more than just an exchange of information. It is also an opportunity to co-create and construct reality together. When that construction is circular, when it spirals, loops, and returns, we move towards coherence - and closer to communion - with ourselves and each other.
Grant that I may not so much seek…to be understood as to understand.
- Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
The 19th Century Genius of Gelett Burgess
When Creativity Outlasts Calculation
I’ve memorized my share of poems - and still remember the smith is a mighty man and there is a force that through the green fuse drives the flower.
There’s one poem, though, I can always recite and often do to the amazement of anyone within the sound of my voice - the last time being at Hornstra Farms in Norwell, Massachusetts - where a quart of the eponymous ice cream flavor will set you back $8.99 USD plus some taxes. You can also get it in a cone or cup para llevar.
It’s the masterwork poem Purple Cow by Gelett Burgess - permanently etched into my deep memory from a Childcraft set of encylopedias devoured each night before bed.
Here’s the poem, in all its absurdist glory.
That's it. 24 words that went 19th century viral. Originally published in Issue One of The Lark, a pre electricity in every home indie ‘zine, Burgess created a content block poem with remarkable half life that refuses to fade into obscurity despite having zero practical application or deep meaning.
Like most one hit wonders, however, who find themselves pigeonholed by a single successful work, Burgess soon grew frustrated with his cow shaped fame. Two years after the poem's publication, in the final issue of The Lark, he published “Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue.”
Ah, yes, I wrote the 'Purple Cow'
I'm sorry now I wrote it;
But I can tell you anyhow,
I'll kill you if you quote it!
Sound familiar? It's the 1897 equivalent of a TikTok celebrity begging people to stop asking them to recreate their one viral dance.
In our oversaturated digital landscape, marketers and content creators obsess over "pattern interrupts” - the ability to make someone stop scrolling. Burgess gave hints of this technique 130 years ago. When most poetry of his day was either stuffed with moral lessons or dripping with sentimentality, Burgess published pure, unapologetic nonsense. No deep meaning. No call to action. Just a purple cow that doesn't exist - and a memorable assertion about rather seeing than being one.
Seth Godin recognized this disruptive quality when he titled his 2003 marketing bible Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. "You're either a Purple Cow or you're not," Godin declared, acknowledging how Burgess's absurdist creation functioned as the perfect metaphor for standing out in a crowded marketplace.
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Imagine if we only remembered David Bowie for "Space Oddity" or Banksy for one rat stencil. That's essentially what happened to Burgess, who was actually something of a renaissance man.
MIT educated, he abandoned engineering to become a genuine multi threat: poet, novelist, illustrator, humorist, and cultural critic - running a one man creative agency producing cross-platform content studio.
And in 1907 he invented something still important in the book publishing industry today that still holds a spot in Merriam - Webster. He coined the term “blurb.” At a book industry dinner, Gillett used a fictitious endorsement from "Miss Belinda Blurb" on his book jacket. This playful nonsense word, likely inspired by sounds like "blur" and “burble" stuck around, becoming publishing's favorite mini sales pitch. And odds are you’re not racking up a best seller without a few of them on the cover.
Now these bite-sized text morsels are everywhere: book jackets, movie posters, product listings, and app store descriptions. In our attention-starved digital age, the humble blurb has evolved from quirky publishing joke to essential marketing tool.
As we navigate an era where AI-generated content floods our feeds and authenticity feels increasingly rare, Burgess's purple cow stands as a reminder of something vital - the power of genuine human weirdness.
The poem wasn't focus grouped. It wasn't optimized for search. It wasn't created to maximize engagement or convert to sales. It was just a human being having fun with language - and somehow, that pure creative impulse has held it’s own against countless calculated content strategies.
In our current landscape, where marketing teams struggle to break through the noise with increasingly sophisticated strategies, there's something refreshingly analog about the staying power of these four simple lines. They remind us that sometimes the most memorable ideas aren't the ones engineered to go viral but the stories that spring from authentic playfulness.
Burgess achieved something most modern creators dream - genuine cultural staying power. I mean, the mascot of Williams College, a Hall of Fame mascot mind you, is Ephelia, The Purple Cow. But, in the purest of legacies, this little nonsense verse has outlived countless serious literary works from the same era.
In our algorithmic, AI-filtered world, it can feel comforting that a four line poem about an imaginary purple cow from 1895 has aged so well. Before TikTok challenges, before Twitter threads, when Morse code was making an appearance, Gelett Burgess dropped what might be one of history's most resilient proto memes and in the process, accidentally created a poetic time capsule in the process.
These two dozen words continue to resonate with each new generation because they tap into something fundamentally human - our appreciation for the absurd and the unexpected - the purple in a world of how now brown cows. And another century from now, when our content strategies and digital platforms are long forgotten, those four simple lines about a purple bovine may still bring smiles to faces, proving that sometimes the most enduring content isn't what's engineered to last, but what's created with authentic human delight.
In Closing
I went out for a walk around the neighborhood after dinner last night and wanted to share this 17 seconds of a circle with water in it.
The Endsō
