{"id":10,"date":"2006-02-13T11:36:02","date_gmt":"2006-02-13T16:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/2006\/02\/13\/speech-after-long-silence\/"},"modified":"2009-02-13T09:48:31","modified_gmt":"2009-02-13T14:48:31","slug":"speech-after-long-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"Speech After Long Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 13, 2006
\nMonday<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Speech after long silence; it is right, . . .
\nThat we descant and yet again descant
\nUpon the supreme theme of Art and Song . . .
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d<\/em>William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Irish poet and patriot
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0“Speech After Long Silence”<\/p>\n

When I cast about for a title for this post, I considered Mick Jagger’s “Start Me Up!” (“If you start me up I’ll never stop”) but decided that he was singing about something a little less sedate than a suburban matron’s personal website. When I thought of Yeats then I did a Google search for the accurate words and discovered that a number of online journals use these lines when their authors are starting up again.<\/p>\n

It’s been six weeks since my last post, not a particularly long silence, but a silence I had determined not to enter into. But, well, I did. I can give the usual excuses. For one thing, I was sick. My paper journal shows entries from January 6 to January 12 on a single page, each of them only the date and the day. On January 23 I noted that it was Day 12 of the 10-day Cold From Hell. “If I don’t work this material [the ongoing “treatment” phase of the novel I’ve been writing for four damn years now] right here, right now, there is no hope for me as a fiction writer,” I wrote.<\/p>\n

There might indeed be little or no hope for me to experience success or recognition (or whatever it is I actually seek) as a fiction writer, but I did get back to that, making some modest progress on that and on the other five goals of a quality life (emphasize the “modest” there).<\/p>\n

And I’m back here, on what would be the 95th anniversary of my mother’s birth*, and the seventh anniversary of my first post, still wanting to descant on the supreme themes of Art and Song. Thanks for still being here.<\/p>\n

(My mother, who graduated from high school in 1927, had a teacher whom she kept in touch with until that teacher died. Miss McInerney was adamant about distinguishing between one’s birthday [in my mother’s case, February 13, 1911] and the subsequent anniversaries of that day. I remember being with my mother in stationery shops trying to find a suitable card. There was never one that said “Happy Birthday Anniversary.”)<\/em><\/p>\n

Love it? Hate it? Just want to say Hi? Leave a comment, or e-mail me:
\nmargaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)<\/em><\/p>\n


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