SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

Anyone?

T.S. Eliot “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Easier one (?)…

”So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Last line of The Great Gatsby.

Last one…pretty tough (although I may be paraphrasing. After all, this is only a blog, right?) Okay, here goes…

“You’ve met my daughter?”

“Yeah…she tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.”

Bogart. “The Big Sleep”

Okay. Real easy –

“Call me Ishmael.”

Yeah. Opening line from Moby Dick.

So stay with me on this one. I’m not trying to show off. (Did it work?) Kidding. I’m really not trying to impress anybody with my depth of (arguably) trivial knowledge. These are excerpts of text and dialogue and yes, art, that speak to me. That trigger an emotional response. Lines I love so much that I committed them to memory. They don’t come from the same source, they don’t convey the same view, but they make me feel good.

Writing should make you feel good. Not necessarily in a happy, or content, or self-improved way. Sometimes in a painful way or an ashamed way or a regretful way or an angry way.

All good art whether it be written, painted, spoken or sung is good art because it makes you feel…feel something, anything, everything. And that’s why it’s important. That’s why it is perhaps The Most Important Thing. It makes you feel…even when you don’t want to.

And that’s why I write. I want to feel something. I want others to feel and touch and experience through my eyes, my head, my heart. There’s nothing better.

Last one…

“Since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;…”

e.e.cummings.

Thoughts?