Sitting in the quiet of Easton Hall's Moore Library, I was stunned by this stanza in Elizabeth's poem:
All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.
On certain days, I hear only noise and bramble... Even the deepest and longest search for refreshing words of poetry yields nothing. The radio plays classical music over the din of ringing telephones and boiling water for tea and hallway conversations, and all of that -- just noise. Some days, I can't even hear the words in my head, can't seem to recall poems like Jack Gilbert's "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" in which everything is substitute and language gets it "all wrong".
At the same time that I'm trying to discern the meaningful sounds (to retrieve something?), at the same time that I'm trying to cancel out the senseless noise (to release something?), I'm trying to make music out of the stories of our ancestors (to create something?)... These are the stories that we sell and retell "on our tongues" as a way of naming and un-naming who we are, who I am.
Praise song for the day that I find the right words and lyrics for whatever it is that I am writing and singing... our traditions, our his/her-stories, our challenges, our mysteries, our surprises, etc. "Someone is trying to make music somewhere" and he or she is doing it using the greatest tools known to human history: stories, poetry, words, art -- magic. What better way than to use our new technologies to tell the oldest stories -- to conjure up our ancestors and traditions, and thereby giving homage and honor to them, before recreating anew.
"We encounter each other in words", says Elizabeth. It's just that sometimes the music is so hard to hear, and my ears have been tuned in the last eight years to war stories, war recoveries, and war histories. Now, starting today, let us use different words to tell new stories, and create something new based upon the values we hold so dear.
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