Thoughts on a Sunday morning
Sunday, June 8th 2003, 0610 hours
Location: my room
Weather: quiet
In the vase: nothing

I almost shut this all down.

If it wasn't for reading Diana's recommendation of me to whoever reads her blog, I probably would have. As it stands now I suppose I ought to write something to appease curious readers.

(And then there are, of course, the random delights of language - the careful crafting and shaping of it, changing lines, deleting paragraphs, transmuting the stuff of life into something rich and strange... This is my tapestry, these the stories I tell, softly woven of words into music. Who was it said all art aspires toward music? You can feel it. The rhythm. The beat. It's what makes the words tell themselves.)

(It is so fragile, and sometimes the wrong word used will cause the whole music to unwind. Some people think it is all about meaning. I assure you of this: they are wrong.)

It is morning, and all's quiet. (In the time it's taken me to write those last few paragraphs it's gotten light outside - which is, perhaps, a fair indication of my writing speed.)

It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a morning. Here, by window-light and lamp-light, I think of Carolina; and in my mind I hear the crunch of snow, the bells of the tower and the church.

I think of Connecticut, and Denise asleep in the next room, and the sounds of my feet on the kitchen floor.

What a whirl it's been, what a world I've seen. It's increasingly hard to remember; places catch you up, take you in. It's funny how much of reality is contained in the little things: branches at sunset, a solitary road, Christmas music playing in a store. The shape of the pavement, cider after snow. The little things. Those are the hardest to recall.

But sometimes they come back, soft, unlooked-for. They come back on mornings like these.

I was having dinner with Ailian the other night. It was a good dinner. It was good talk. It's been such a long time since I've had conversations of that sort. I find myself starved for friends, for company. And not just anybody will do. Casual conversations are all well and good, but sometimes I crave more.

Because I look for more than children's tunes or radio background noise - stuff you don't really care for, don't really pay attention to. A conversation has a music of its own, and - being improvised - is difficult to manage well. But sometimes it can be done. Multiple voices speaking in turn: duets, trios, quartets. Each party listening, really listening, and responding. That's about as good as it can get for us humans. But even that aspires to something higher, where speaking and listening become one, yet separate. Where each voice balances in melody and counterpoint. Conversation aspires to fugue.

It's been over a month since I last updated. Since then I've been working: I'm interning as a writer for the Ministry of Defence. It really isn't a particularly interesting job. The people - full-time staff, NSFs, other interns - are all right, I suppose. But there is nothing particularly interesting about them, nothing I'll be sorry to leave behind. No oil in their lamps. I hate that. Few things are as intolerable as the mindnumbing mediocrity of the everyday. Or at least, of certain everydays. There are places and people among whom the everyday is delightful, extraordinary, worth living in. I know this because I have been there. But this is not the place, and these are not the people.

Perhaps this is why we need art, and artists. People, who take the dross of the contemptible everyday and change it, make it worthwhile, infuse it with meaning. I don't believe art uncovers the meaning that was already there; things, people, places, events aren't meaningful in themselves - texts are just text, and that's all. Meaning comes only with, and is inseparable from, the act of interpretation. The artist is an interpreter, an intermediary between ourselves and whatever it is that's been taken as subject.

This, of course, isn't to say that every interpreter is an artist. What's the difference? Craft. Technical dexterity. Skill. It's the ability to take something completely beyond the everyday, to give us a glimpse of the superhuman. To bring us from the mundane to the magical.

And what's the word for that particular sort of magic?

Beauty.