The Man With a Wooden Tongue
Serendipity & Synchronicity! I was in a used bookstore yesterday, looking for great literature to read, and found a paperback of lists of awards such as Nobel, Pulitzer, affixed to the wall, not for sale, as a reference for customers.
I browsed through that list and had it in mind as I logged to this forum.
When, Lo and Behold, what meets my eyes but a thread on Nobel
Prize winners.
This truly is a wonderful forum with posts which are stimulating and
though provoking. I feel grateful to have found such a forum.
I caught a "60 Minutes" interview with Bob Dylan this week which
mentioned that he shall receive a prize (is it Nobel or Pulitzer) in
recognition of the literary merits of his lyrics. I grew up in the 60's
with his music. Bob Dylan was asked if he could still write such
memorable songs nowadays, to which he answered a frank "No."
When asked if this saddened him, he most sensibly replied "One
cannot continue to do something indefinitely. I wrote them once, for
which I am grateful. I can do other things now, worthwhile things, but I
cannot write such songs again" (my paraphrase).
Bob Dylan is now 63 years of age. Such sensible answers he gave.
As some of you may know, I have recently started posting here,
mentioning the book which I am trying to write at
http://toosmallforsupernova.org
I mention my writing here to make a point regarding something which
I learned from Bob Dylan's interview. How may I find the proper words
for this in the limited time which I have this morning? We who desire
to write and create are moved on by the desire to achieve something
significant and everlasting, something worthy of the world's
recognition, such as a Nobel prize. The magnitude of such ambition is
often daunting enough to become in itself a writer's block. Buddhists
say that the very desire for liberation is itself an impediment to
liberation. Also, we may feel intimidated by the challenge to produce
more than one work. Whenever we open any novel, one of the first
pages we see is a long list of prior successful works by the author.
Success is one of the ingredients of failure in the sense that the vision
of success and perfection can halt us in our tracks, frozen like some
nocturnal creature in a bright beam.
But, you are not here reading. I am alone. I write for myself. This
darkness of evening and night which surrounds me is cool and
inviting. It accepts me and does not judge. The moon is my
companion, yet I am invisible in her gentle light. I become light and
drift upon the slighest breeze. I am carried aloft above the trees, the
farms, the cities and all civilization. I enter the dream and become
the dream, and nothing else matters.
Stephen Crane is well known for "The Red Badge of Courage" which
he wrote in ten days flat. He is less known for a little poem entitled
"The Man with a Wooden Tongue," which I shall try to paraphrase now
from memory:
"There was once a man with a wooden tongue who desired to sing. As
he tried to sing, the most dreadful clap-trapping din of a sound would
arise from that wooden sound of his. But as he sang his clamorous
frightful song, one person heard, and understood what it was that the
wooden tongue wished to sing and say but could not. This was
enough, if only one might hear and understand."
