“…and the pitter-patter on the roof
sounds like What’s the matter with you?
But this rain can’t wash a thing away
the dirty truth just fades to grey
and leaves the hate so smooth…”
–excerpted from the silence that screams–
she was a round little jewish woman named Mrs. Sher, pronounced sure–and that she was; she had thickrimmedglasses and the edges of her mouth turned down but not in an unpleasant way: it seemed she had been squinting to read her whole life and had inadvertently found a frown, though it transformed into a radiant, whole-hearted embrace of what’s good or to be celebrated when she read something she liked. this little woman broke down the barriers structured writing had snuck up and netted me with sometime in my sleep. she explained grammar as an essential tool in any writer’s quiver, because of the ability to subconsciously guide the reader by causing him or her to pause or notice or speed up or get in close with the action and emotion of the writing.
and then she pointed out the patterning. I had never seen it before. not clearly at least. she had me read a sentence describing a train. and then told me to shut my eyes as she read the sentence, and instead of listening to the words, listen instead to the sounds of the words. and I heard the train.
it was revolutionary for me. it rocked everything I knew and had assumed about good writing deriving from ambiguous emotional reactions… it showed me that there were many writing gods, and that they had far more power than I had ever imagined. and so authors became artists. and as an artist, I first yearned to author.
the tiny excerpt above is taken from the end of one of the songs I wrote later that year when I first started studying patterning and layering and syllables as sounds. I awoke this morning to a clean breeze and the strong smell of rain, and I was pleased in a way that only waking to rain seems to evoke. its that patterning that I want to celebrate. and Mrs. Sher I want to recognize for presenting the path to writing and equipping my quest.
yours,
Clifton Jennings Rhoad
Aqueous Transmissions 