Sound

Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself. The cadence, whatever it is that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice . . . My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make my changes. I have always trusted this voice.

-Eurdora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings

I rarely play music while writing, because I am listening for a sound inside my head. It is not a sound of the earth. It is of a deeper resonance.

I can hear it best when most other sounds are stilled. I hear it in the way I "hear" a thought in my head.

It forms an image, then a word, then a sentence. It is the music of the universe and the template of the Spirit. From this, Jesus described a river which flows out of the innermost being of a man who believes.

It speaks, but not aloud. It speaks the language of the heart. We "hear" it when we see a new baby or a bride coming down the aisle or a breathtaking vista. It pours over us at these moments and lifts us high above our everyday concerns.

This is what matters, it sings. There is a deeper story beneath the story you see. As the music rises, I feel like dancing.

If we dare, most of us recall at least one moment when the music filled us and was all. We recall, but we don't talk about it.

How can one describe the sound of joy? How can one explain the scent of pure meaning? I cannot. But I know when it wells up on me in the middle of life.

It is this sound I listen for when I write. I try to catch it and record it. I want to sketch its image on my page.

What do you try to catch when you write?

This was written for the study of Julia Cameron's The Right to Write with High Calling Blogs. You can go there to read more reflections by other writers after reading this week's chapters.