Any Beach, Any Place, Any Time

“Be / As a page that aches for a word / Which speaks on a theme that is timeless…”

© 1973 Neil Diamond, Lyrics from the movie soundtrack Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

So often, as writers, we struggle to fill blank pages with words that when taken all together–in their final and edited arrangement–will be meaningful to readers, and that will somehow, in some way, move them to a deeper understanding of themselves, their relationships, their appreciation of nature, their understanding of suffering and so much more.  Recently, while listening to the soundtrack of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull for the first time in many, many years, the words I have quoted above touched me in a way that I’d not experienced before, even though I’d played the album over and over again in the ’70s when I was in awe of both the Voice and the lyrics of the singer.  (That capital V was intentional!)

Coming to these words again, after writing fiction for many years, I now envy Diamond’s poetic and succinct expression of the deeply felt emotions that one may experience in relationship to the blank page, for he chose to equate it with each one of us and our yearning, or spiritual longing, to infuse whatever we place there with infinite and universal meaning.  There have been many times when I, too, have ached “for a word, which speaks on a theme that is timeless….”  I’m sure I’m not the only one who has felt this way.  You, too?