For Booker
“The river starts like a spring and the story just came out. The river starts like a spring and he’s like a newborn baby, tumbling and spitting, and one day, attracted by a puddle, he starts to run. He scurries and scampers and wants to get to the marsh, and, after being followed by a big bubble, he does, and at the end of the run he goes into the meander. Then he skips and dances and runs until he’s exhausted, and he lies down by the lake-all horizontal lines, ripples, reflections, God-made and untouched. Then he goes over the falls and down into the whirlpool, the vortex of violence, and out of the whirlpool into the main track of the river. He widens, becomes broader, loses his adolescence, and down at the delta, passes between two cities. Like all cities on the opposite sides of the deltas, you can find certain things in one and not in the other, and vice versa, so we call the cities Neo-Hip-Hot-Cool Kiddies’ Community and the Village of the Virgins. The river passes between them and romps into the mother-Her Majesty The Sea-and, of course, is no longer a river. But this is the climax, the heavenly anticipation of rebirth, for the sea will be drawn up into the sky for rain and down into wells and into springs and become the river again. So we call the river an optimist. We’ll be able to play the ballet in any church or temple, because the optimist is a believer.”
– Duke Ellington
“Medicine, to produce health, must examine disease, and music, to create harmony, must examine discord.”
– Plutarch