The Musicians

Do what you love. Know your bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
— Henry David Thoreau

In The Writing Life (1989), Annie Dillard tells us to “write as if you were dying….What would you write if you knew you were dying soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage them by its triviality?”

The irony of Dillard’s advice is that you have to write about trivial things (coffee pots, hangnails, squirrels, laundry hampers) in order to elevate them and make them universal. You can’t start by writing about Life, Death, Love, Truth, or God; All meaningless topics. You have to back your way into anything profound, using the concrete image. This is why so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, and why Ezra Pound hung out by the Metro Station in Paris.

Pay attention to serendipity, the accidental drop-shipment of material right into your lap. It’s not only knowing how to pay attention, but how to filter out a signal from all the noise.

One evening in Southern Pines, NC, I was invited at the last minute to attend a jam session, happening in another part of the Weymouth Center, where I was staying for a week as a writer-in-residence. Nine senior age men were seated in a circle: guitar, mandolin, fiddle, upright bass, passing the baton of song (covers and originals) among each other, for several hours.

The jam was not performance-hall quality, but it was very high on charm and entertainment, and joy. I felt like I was watching a documentary film about nine musicians reuniting on a summer evening, perhaps to mourn the passing of a tenth member, who played cajón drum. I sensed that a poem, and possibly a short story, might grow out of this intersection.

As I watched them play, the nods and eye contact used for key changes and the outro, I thought about what it takes to sing a ballad, to follow the chord changes, and when to solo, even when you may not even know the song.

I returned to the solitude of my room in the other wing of the house, ready to face the blank page, even if no one was around to witness my performance.

This essay originally appeared in The Writing Mirror (2018)

Photo by author (musicians: Matthew Soergel, Victor Huls, Mark Williams, Geej Williams, a gathering in Atlantic Beach, FL, May 2021)