Goblin of a tongue

I'm in the last days of finishing up an article about the types of materials that I've developed for the flute in each of my pieces since about 2004. And the writing has proven rewarding in an unexpected way: I've become much more aware of feelings centered strongly within the body as I've chipped away at my own understanding of what it is that goes into the breath, the fingers, the muscles of the face, and on and on in the production of many of these sounds. An excerpt:

The tongue extends forward in the space of the mouth. Apical tip in contact with the ridge of the gums, the blade becomes imperceptibly taut and the muscle takes on the function of a lock, sealing the vocal tract and blocking the expulsion of air from the lungs. In this small fraction of a second the tongue transitions from lax to ready, waiting, as it were, at attention, pressed up and into the alveolar ridge, fixed just between the hard palate and the upper row of teeth. A goblin of a tongue --- imbued with a magic agency --- might wonder at this. Pink skeletal muscle. Arbiter of bitter, sweet, sour, savory and salt. But confined to darkness and unable to see. Would such a tongue wonder at the boundaries of its world? At its root buried past the the glossopalatine arch? At the hardness of the gums against which it presses?

The language has wound up as a mix of the partially poetic and the partially exploratory, in all cases centered on direct sensation of the body, or of parts of the body. And this has been, for me, something of a revelation.