The Trapeze Swinger

Have you heard that song?  It is nine minutes of brutal, winding, haunting song.  I love things that fully inhabit themselves.  That is when writing, any writing, feels best.  Not easy to do.  It requires risk and courage and very good balance for the cliffs are steep out there.  But the rewards?  The rewards are huge.

I have been thinking about boldness.  It is not easy to write.  Boldness cannot fling itself onto the page, uncaring of the response.  That would not ring true.  Boldness must be conscious of the dangers and calculate how far the fall and then charge the field.  Without armour, without cavalry, without hope of rescue.

Akhmatova begins her poem "There will be thunder then.  Remember me."  Bold, dangerous.

Du Maurier begins her great novel with "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again."  Again?  But this is the first sentence.  She does it without a net.

Dr. Seuss fearlessly writes for children:

"I am the Lorax!  I speak for the trees,
Which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please;
But I also speak for the brown Barbaloots,
Who frolicked and played in their barbaloot suits,
Happily eating Truffula fruits."  Of course.  A Lorax.  I know a Lorax.

That is when we admire the writing.  It cannot be faked.  We would smell artifice immediately.  Every wonder of the literary canon faced a terrifying field.  But even when they fall, an often they do, we admire the attempt.

I love the options my spell check gave me for 'Barbaloots"...