24 March 2006

Voice on the Tree of Life

way back when, we painted
a white stripe on each human branch
each time its human
spoke a word

and we saw those stripes
in small groups
synchronise
when people chanted or sang together

or alternate, in batches
when they conversed

and we saw poetry
badly recited
forming uniform stripes

as the rhythms of network newsreaders
follow a limited set of patterns

or someone reading aloud

or the inner voice
of the narrator
as we silently read a novel

but when a good novelist writes dialog
a much broader set of rhythms can be used
to capture their mood
and reveal their character

(Joyce is the champ for this

George V Higgins gets an honorable mention)




now if we consider the cylinder
(or cone)
traced by a branch's radial ontology

with lit stars
when ontology-categories
are being actively
incarnated
as lifestories

we may view that life
as a novel
with stars implying
an almost-infinite
cascade of words

out of which
the novelist/biographer
chooses a finite subset

that can represent
all the important themes

not omitting, one hopes
words in rhythmic patterns

capturing the character's voice