Sense and Sensibilities

Yesterday evening on my way to the Down nearby, I listened to one of my music collections from many years ago. Many emotions arouse in me, all rooted in a remote past. These songs belonged to a certain period of my past, yet the attached feelings were smudgy and not quite clear as I expected. There was rather a faded reflection of my past. It occurred to me that what we possess in our mind keeps changing in the course of time. The love we felt is different from the love we think about. I suppose in recollection of a past time, two elements are involved: the images of that moment and the belonged feelings. What we feel now, in listening to a song for instance, is not what we felt originally. It is the memory of one time feeling which holds a ghost-like quality. Something has disappeared, perhaps its density , detials. What was coming back to me through the music, was a reminicanse of a one time feeling; something like walking by the edge of a garden and “smelling” the “aroma” in the air, but not being able to see the “flower”.

Following this stream of consciousness, yesterday, I ended up thinking about writers and a customary belief about them. Many times, I have heard this common idea that writers can write, because they are more emotionally affected by surrounding. I am not sure I would like this statement, if I were a writer.

Surely, sensitivity towards the “outside and others” is a primary tool in a writer’s kit. But this is just one of many. One can write a book on this subject, as many have already written. But, in short, I believe, fellow writers write not only because they feel more strongly, but also because of the pain they take to interpret “things” we call emotions to some tangible descriptions. They bother to dive in to that thick and deep stream of feelings and turn them to an illuminating observation, to something touchable. I suppose this can be one of many standards for a “classic”. How many times, we have experienced the stupendous moment in reading, when we discover the best expressed expression for something. For instant, a novice person in wine tasting, can describes various wines only by: bitter, sweet, strong or weak. Many of us in expressing our different moods, habitually do not go further than some ordinary definitions: tiered, angry, glad etc.

Perhaps, a good writer, like an alchemist, is able to crystallise the fluid of abstract feelings to a solid concrete material. And mutually, ferment or deconstruct the “concrete” to some emotional “solution”.