Isn’t it amazing how these strangely shaped designs can be put together to make up letters and words, things that have meaning to us? Back in 1962, in The Ticket that Exploded, William S Burroughs claimed that man only became capable of spoken language because of a virus that changed the physical structure of the throat and that the ability to speak then limited our written language and our thinking.  This concept of language as a virus was repeated in Laurie Anderson’s eponymous song:

"I think he's in some kind of pain.
I think it's a pain cry."
And I said: "Pain cry?
Then language is a virus."

To me, describing language as a virus makes it seem too random, and certainly too easy! Maybe we should just put it down to Burroughs’ opiate dependency?

Sign in a Malasaña shop window, Madrid

Linked to Weekly Photo Challenge: Letters.