Month: September 2020

Words –

Like the air I breath

There as long as I have life

Even if I couldn’t say them

Write them or even hear them

They’d be inside of me

And I would know them

lyrically yours – stephanie c brown

Imagine a world with no words spoken or unspoken. Of course, you can not because even in imagining there are words. Every image, every emotion, your brain is naming or trying to. Words are so important that we have words to describe our relationship with words. We are at a loss for them; we are moved by them; we are hurt by them; we are healed by them; we search for them; we borrow them; we steal them; we use them; we wish we had them; we remember them; we forget them; we go places and have experiences without our bodies with them. We use words for all of these.

What a mystery words are. I am writer and have been as long as I can remember and before, but I do not know how true my words are for others. I found a wide-ruled, black composition book from the first grade. Before I knew cursive, in large print letters with misspelled words, I wrote about a goat who drove a car and smoked a cigarette. That goat had no basis in reality, but it was in my head and I had words to express it although not well. There is so much I wonder about that goat and the little girl who invented him. I am prone to flights of fantasy, and I find words to express them.

JK Rowling, who certainly knows the power of words and has made a lot of money from words, describes words as the most inexhaustible source of magic we have. Think about it. How many worlds created by words have you visited. How many concepts have you grasped because you either read or heard words spoken or written by someone else. We write them, we speak them, we hear them, but what their force is invisible- magic.

Do words ever die? When no one, no one at all, speaks them or writes them or remembers them, maybe they are dead, but their influence never dies. A language many be “dead”, but its shaping power on a culture or society lives on.

Emily Dickenon’s crystal clear succient words in her poem “Dead Words” writes of words:

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

I say the same is true once a word is written. The words I think and never speak or write affect me. The ones I speak or write affect other people. I write for both reasons.

I even have words to describe when I have no words.

                     Soul of the Past

If I had a video of every moment of my life

I would have nothing but images and sounds.

When my eyes are closed and I hear nothing

Then my past comes to me.

It shifts and changes

So I never really know it

But the emotions remain

For they are the soul of the past.

lyrically yours -stephanie c brown

When I started this blog post, I planned to write about the power of words to create. Instead I wrote the words that came to me. Who knows where words come from? As a lover of words and a writer, I have spent hours writing these words and loving writing.

Comments are so appreciated.

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All things in good time is one of my mottos. Now is the good time for me to write a book. I am in self-isolation so have never had more time or focus.

I have been writing ever since I can remember. In the first grade I wrote a story about a goat driving a car and smoking cigarettes. In the seventh grade, I sent a handwritten short story to a major magazine that I am pretty sure did not recieve many handwritten manuscripts not following guidelines. Someone took the time to send a polite rejection letter. I wish I had saved that. Writers seldom throw anything away unless in a state of frustration or temper because the writing is not as good as they want it to be. I still have the story in some box somewhere.

For the last forty-five years, I have been either a teacher or a songwriter. I never could balance the two so bounced back and forth. I am now and have been a songwriter more years than a teacher. I have written hundreds of songs, many journal pages, and a book in that time. The book I did not throw away but have been tempted. I still think the story is good and may write it someday, but the writing itself is not good to the point of bad. Friends who read it had a hard time finding anything to say. I sent it to three publishers, got rejection letters, reread it, and put my copy in a closet.

I retired from teaching and transitioned into songwriting. At seventy-five I am in transition again. I am proud of my age and my life, but there’s something more yet to come. I always know it when I am in transition but seldom know to what. Still writing songs is part of it. Sharing my life with this blog and interviews is part of it. Those I have been doing. The new part is writing books. I no longer feel I am in transiton.

I am still floundering a bit on my book, so I asked my Facebook friends to tell me what they think I should write about. Their suggestions helped me; now I know what I do not want the book to be. The suggestions were to write about my experiences. My kneejerk response to each was no! I do not what to spend months on a book about me. What they want to know will be in this blog. There’s a whole world out there with many conversations. As a writer, I do not want to be wrapped up in me. I want to be more than the sum of my past.

One of the facebook responses, sealed the deal for me. I am a writer. A friend questioned why I would spend that much time (three months) writing a book – what would it accomplish in the end? My response was because I am a writer.

This is my declaration of independence though I did not know it when I sat down to write.

Thank you for being part of my journey.