Where's My Head At?

[Kevin Chilton]

It is little short of spooky how, sometimes, whats going on in your head can be so eleglantly echoed in the words of an unknown writer. Several times in recent weeks I have been reminded that there is still something magical about words.

The first is an article in the Saturday Guardian Review 28.07.07 entitled Ghost Writing in which Hilary Mantel, reflecting on the enduring resonance of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, produces a passage that makes the hair on then back of my neck stand up:.

"There is a way in which the question “Do you believe in ghosts?” is unnecessary to ask: we all know a few, and they walk at all hours, if only through our memories. Our ancestors are encoded in our genes. Look at your face in a mirror, and one day you will see one of you parents moving under your skin; the next day it may be a grandparent come to visit. Within you, there are people you have never been able to mourn because you never knew them, people from the distant past: the traces of your animal ancestors still lives in your instincts, in your physiology. As products of evolution we carry all the past inside us; we are walking repositories of the lost."

The second two are from Ivo Andric's brilliant novel The Bridge Over the Drina, which I only recently discovered who, in writing about the end of the 19th century with such passion and understanding of humanity, proved once again that human nature changes very little over time:

"Such were those three decades of relative prosperity and apparent peace in the Franz-Josef manner, when many Europeans thought that there was some infallible formula for the realization of a centuries-old dream of full and happy development of individuality in freedom and in progress, when the nineteenth century spread out before the eyes of millions of men its many-sided and deceptive prosperity and created its Fata Morgana of comfort, security and happiness for all and everyone at reasonable prices and even on credit terms."

"Withdrawn into the farthest corners the notorious addicts of plum brandy sat silent. They were lovers of shadow and silence, sitting over their plum brandy as if it were something sacred, hating movement and commotion. With burnt-out stomachs, inflamed livers and disordered nerves, unshaven and uncared for, indifferent to everything else in the world and a burden even to themselves, they sat there and drank, and while drinking, waited until that magical light which shines for those completely given over to drink should at last burst upon them, that joy for which it is sweet to suffer, to decay and finally to die, but which unfortunately appears more and more rarely and more weakly".

Then there were the two random quotes that captured me:

"The universe is made of stories, not atoms" - Muriel Rukeyser

"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge" -Albert Einstein

And finally a couple of song lyrics that seemed to have embedded themselves in some subterranean strata of my brain:

“The final proof that love's not just blind but deaf as well.”

“My minds all screwed up, I'm upside down, but my heart's on overdrive.”

Well that just about sums it up.