On the power of words

During A block yesterday I got to observe a class, a class with a teacher new to our school but not new to teaching.  This part of my job responsibilities is one that I have grown to love more and more each year.  I came into the room with the echoes of Mr. Lovett’s talk, sharing his appreciation of poetry ringing in my ear.  As I sat and watched the lesson unfold about the character development in the classic To Kill a Mockingbird, I couldn’t help but think of my appreciation of words - of sentences, of the gift of writers to move us to emotion, to action toward a world they most want us to see and understand, and ultimately inhabit.  As the students in the class paged through their books, looking for quotes and talking about changes they saw in Jem or Boo, I was reminded of how I came to love reading.

As I think I have shared with some of you before, I did not read well when I was young; in fact, I don’t know that I read much at all.  My mother and grandmother were librarians, and you would have thought I would have been surrounded by books.  In fact, I was, but most of them were decorations in the background of my room or the hallways of my house.  And as I was sitting there in that classroom, I did remember when I was first caught by the power of reading. It was Smaug, the dragon. My first reading of The Hobbit took place before Netflix or Amazon Prime; it was before cable, just as the VHS and Betamax battle was beginning.  It was a time when one’s imagination was not bombarded by moving images. I remember vividly when Bilbo crawls into the darkness and Smaug is revealed for the first time.

“There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; a thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but the fires were low in slumber.  Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red stained in the ruddy light.”

Bringing forth that vision of the great Smaug for me as an 8th grader was the very beginning of my path toward reading.  For years, it and the ring trilogy were the only books I could really say I read cover to cover.  I do remember a bit from A Separate Peace, and I know I also read To Kill and Mockingbird as our sophomores do. But those were exercises for me, and probably mostly because I just couldn’t read well enough to connect with the characters.  But in that cave filled with jewels and guarded by a sleeping dragon, my wonder was captivated, and I was exposed to the power of writing and the pleasure of reading.

Recently, I was reading The Heart of the Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers, at the urging of Mr. Lovett, and there was a passage that hit me.  Mick, a central character in the novel, spends her days babysitting, and then retreats in the evenings to an affluent side of town where she sits in a bush outside a particular house, listening to the radio program playing inside. At this point in the story, it is clear that there is something about music for her that the reader is just coming to understand.

“This part of the music was beautiful and clear.  She could sing it now whenever she wanted to.  Maybe later on, when she had just waked up some morning, more of the music would come back to her.  If she ever heard the symphony again there would be other parts to add to what was already in her mind.  And maybe if she could hear it four more times, just four more times she would know it all.”

I, too, can remember being bowled over by music. I think some faculty may remember when I shared my favorite aria from La Boheme.  For those who do not love Opera yet, come find me and I will share it with you.  I can feel the emotion well up in me just thinking about the building interplay between Mimi and Rodolpho.  Like Mick, I, too, know it all…

Music and art, writing and poetry just need willing participants. They just need us to be open to the possibilities that lie within us. They need us to be open to the experience, to keep trying and trusting, and most of all, not to let disappointment or difficulty dissuade us from our paths.

Sailboats in the afternoon, South Hero Vermont.

These days, I am moved by images and words.  I find myself looking to be inspired, to be transported and transfixed by artists and writers.  I look to books to escape and to learn, to laugh and to cry, and I look to images and art to help me uncover what is already there, hiding and waiting.  As we enter October, fall colors and cool temps bring us deeper into our classes and closer to those people around us. This time of year begs of us to build connections, through ideas and images, words and work. 

What will you discover this fall?  I, for one, hope that the discoveries you unearth will stay with you for a lifetime.