The Scent of Music
Today a thought descended: language possesses a lost luminosity. It paired itself with a further one: language is the primitive refined by the writing that wrenches us into being. These two notions feel right to me, complete.
Writing as quest, as a hunter going after the scent of music inside every word. Like wine tasters, we need a good nose that will put us on the scent trail for the scent messages whorled inside the fingerprints of music.
Each note a fingerprint, no two alike. Therein, thereby, the trained voice. I believe in the importance of the voice box, listen for its inimitable vibrations. On sound waves, words are caressed into being. Then they align themselves with the rightness, the trueness of stars.
By which we are guided and what we write does guide us, school us in what was unutterable finally uttered, be it taboo or not. Moving into the taboo is important, very important indeed. If we can leave fingerprints, voice prints on the taboo we might just compose those singing sentences that weave us into one human family.
Ah, that word, family. So often the lost paradise not to be regained, but we can attach language to that lost paradise and the doomed can be sung into beauty. I know this. I write about that which cannot be accepted by own very real family. They do not want to bear witness to my truths and I understand this fully.
The lost luminosity, the primitive refined is what makes the unbearable bearable. The holocaust happened and it had been written about. 9/11 happened, too, has been written about, but those abominable happenings closer to home sweet home is so often silenced with dead silence.
I break the taboo like kindling across my knee to make a little fire and language with its lost luminosity, with the primitive refined, makes that little fire which will warm me on the coldest of nights.
And this is one such night. Wind chill factors well, well below zero, but thank God, my ink doesn’t freeze. Fluidity is what it’s all about and fluidity comes from fidelity and writing does demand fidelity.
Call it the Muse or not. My dog is my muse: it’s her true calling. Down behind my writing chair she nests and her devotion to me kindles my devotion to the work. Being disciplined about writing comes easy to me. Discipline in other areas of my life not so easy, except for mothering.
Yet writing is all about mothering words into being. The hunt is on, yes, the hunt is on for the scent of music in that lost luminosity, in the primitive refined. I have a good nose, a better ear and the intoxications caused by both leave me spinning, weaving word to word.
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