There are months (and this is one of them) when I feel I am at best a poor servant of Jazz. I’m like one of those monastic scribes who have talked their way into the monastery, professing a deep fervor and devotion to matters otherworldly when they are just on the lam from some peccadillo or other. A filched crust of black bread? An all-too-human indiscretion with some farmer’s daughter? Stone walls and silence offer asylum (in lieu of an actual asylum). Fine. Here then are your quills and inks, Brother Alias. Get thee to work!
I know that I would be one of those monks doodling in the margins of holy texts, being of insufficient reverence to keep my mind on my task. That was certainly how I felt when sitting in class, scrawling amusing pictures in my notebooks. School was supposed to be a momentary haven from strife, also. It wasn’t—not for me, at any rate. If I had persevered in my scribbling, I might have been a cartoonist. I couldn’t even draw a clever enough rabbit skewering a knight with a pickle fork to make it as a wry monk-illustrator. Pictures fail me, and so I am stuck with words.
Words don’t fail me, but sometimes I can’t hear the music behind them. I lose the thread and the passion is eclipsed for the time being. Some writers stop writing and seek to replenish it. My philosophy is that if my muse hasn’t shown up by a certain time, I must start without her
