Soliloquy

“There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art.  All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys.” Stevenson’s astuteness rings true, as I often seek to awaken my own dead imaginings with necromantic palaver.

Words are the playground equipment where I frolic on my flights of fancy. But even the most novel of entertaining devices become humdrum in the absence of another with which to share them. My sincere tête-à-tête requires another soul, a playmate, a partner in crimes of colloquy. Without this other object of my affection, my words fall flat, are found wanting, as I struggle to stagger from one poetic pulley to the next, frantically putting together sentences to make anyone, someone, give a genuine smile in my direction. If it were my words that solicited this from you, I’d settle for a “sigh”.

Even God recognized that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone. It was the first thing He declared about His creation to not be good. Adam had to go to sleep before he could awake to another. Perhaps before I can wake up to a rival simulacra, I too must sleep. I must sleep deeply. This sleep is elusive, but in my constant torpor I dream of the awakening. I will marvel at the sight. “Woman” I will descant, and perhaps sing as Adam sung, “Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone”. The best words are spoken before slumber fully retreats and are spoken in verse and rhyme, only later to be desecrated by prose. Something devastating must have robbed humanity of the poetic? A great fall indeed. I fight these thieves still.

Now these soliloquies occupy my time. My existence defined by musings yet unwritten. Hopeful that someone, somewhere soon will read them and think of me. Please reach out and break these uncomfortable dark silences. Meanwhile my thoughts dance alone to a music strummed softly, instruments of a primal dormancy last heard in Eden.

Art is always near the surface. The coarseness of beauty lies deeper below.