Sometimes in a day that's going in too many directions at once, filled with a
strong feeling that surges out of the shallow waters of intellect and can only
find its depth in music, I want to hear a certain song. Lately it's been Jimi
Hendrix's live cover of "Like a Rolling Stone." And sometimes it's enough to just imagine the music coming from me, me becoming Hendrix, calling
the drummer Bob Dylan's grandmother, banging out the first chords. "Yeah
hear what I say now—"
But other times that's not enough—sometimes you have to hold
whatever instrument it is that you play and try to play what you want to hear.
I've got a violin. Violins and guitars are different creatures, but it doesn't
stop me from trying. It doesn’t matter what it might sound like to others—if I
can get the barest scrape to how it’s supposed to sound, it’s usually enough.
And still other times, the music I want to hear is words.
Sometimes just reading the words is enough, imagining myself reading them, the
author reading them—myself as the author.
But other times I've got to actually write the words, with my own
hands hitting the chords and plucking out the riffs. Because so help me God it
gets more and more preposterous, it corresponds less and less to what I
remember and what I expect as if the force of life were centrifugal and threw
one further and further away from one's purest memories and ambitions; and I
can barely recall the old house where I was raised, where in midwinter Parma
violets bloomed in a cold frame near the kitchen door, and down the long
corridor, past the seven views of Rome—up two steps and down three—one entered
the library, where all the books were in order and the lamps were bright.
Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos (no less) and we can
accomplish this only by the most vigilant exercise of choice, but in a world
that changes more swiftly than we can perceive there is always the danger that
our powers of selection will be mistaken and that the vision we serve will come
to nothing.
I think that's why for so long schoolchildren were taught to get Bible
verses and poems to heart, and why to John Cheever, in one story no words of
his own would do, why the old durable words came through him with the irresistible
force of a song we all know:
"Do, he wrote, or you'll be dead. I felt very tired. I put
another piece of paper into the machine and wrote: The Lord is my shepherd,
therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture and lead me
forth beside the waters of comfort. He shall convert my soul and bring me forth
in the paths of righteousness for his Name's sake. Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me; thy
rod and thy staff comfort me. Thou shalt prepare a table before me in the
presence of them that trouble me; thou hast anointed my head with oil and my
cup shall be full. Surely thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the
days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. I gave this
to Ralphie and went home."
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