“Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
—Leonard Cohen
I carry deep within me the memory of a sound: a thick layer of broken ice—a whole lake-full of it, pale gray, coming to shore in waves. All those broken pieces hitting each other—it was musical. Like glass or wind chimes. I’ve been around many thawing lakes, but heard that particular music only once.
I hope some day I’ll hear it again.
It is the beauty of the sound that I hold on to, the fact that it was an effect of brokenness merely a side issue. Except that the brokenness, along with the buffeting of waves, was also the one necessary fact.
What comes out? What triumphs? What is revealed?
It strikes me that looking for silver linings can seem like a very cheap thing. Except that sometimes, when you either should be or are lying crushed on the floor, you realize that you have in your hand the slenderest silver thread. And it turns out to be amazingly strong. Enough to hold on to. Enough to bear your weight. It is no help at all for someone to point it out to you from afar. But when you are touching it it’s the most profound thing in the world.
This, I think, is the difference between pretty and gut-wrenchingly beautiful: light in the darkness, water when you are thirsty, rest when you are weary.
What is the overflow? What will you hold on to? What will you carry with you?
Some music for you today (Bruckner Symphony No. 7, 1st movt., or the whole symphony if you have time) and here’s why: I carry with me also the memory of a college orchestra rehearsal, and this piece, and the conductor stopping: “Do you hear that? Bruckner was an organist: he is practicing, filling a great cathedral with sound, and when he stops he hears in the distance the sound of a choir singing.” Yes, I hear it. The thunderous sound, and then not silence but silver threads, light coming fragmented and jeweled through stained glass, everything illuminated in sound and light.
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