For those who best express things through the written word,
triumph and tragedy are the greatest challenges. How can one capture either the
heights of elation or the bitterness of mourning that are, literally, beyond
words? Yet it is those time when the wordsmith is most needed, for it is those
times when people desperately seek to bridge the gulf between what they are
feeling and what they can express. This is almost the definition of art itself,
for it is from the extremes of human experience that the majority of great art
finds it richest resource. Now, I can assure you that I do not consider myself
a literary great. But I do consider myself as someone who best expresses
themselves through writing. I write in various forms – song lyrics, poems,
analysis & opinion (i.e. blogging) and have a couple of nascent novel
ideas. The past couple of weeks I have seen a flurry of writing that I’ve not
experienced for a long while; not incidentally there have simultaneously been
things of both great joy and sorrow going on. The point of these musings? I
have come to appreciate afresh that writing is a powerful, valuable, God-given
entity that has a life-affirming and healing power both for the author and
those far beyond; the ability to connect in the midst of our brightest and
darkest hours.
Continuing on the theme of the power of writing, I recently came
across this astonishing quote from Victor Hugo that I had to share: “I feel within me that future
life. I am like a forest that has been razed; the new shoots are stronger and
brighter. I shall most certainly rise toward the heavens the nearer my approach
to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which
invite me. For half a century I have been translating my thoughts into prose
and verse: history, drama, philosophy, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and
song; all of these I have tried. But I feel I haven’t given utterance to the
thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say, as
others have said, “my day’s work is done”. But what I cannot say, “my life is
done”. My work will recommence the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley;
it is a thoroughfare. It closes upon the twilight, but opens upon the dawn.”
