“Some sighs out their sentences, but some sings out their silences.”

This is a thing I rewrote from a misremembering*. It’s in my head a lot, in its misapprehended state. I love it.

In this issue of Tidings of Magpies we’ve shared many thoughts on the varying ways we create and experience and share art. Different ways we find our voices and use our silences. We all have our own methods; different times of day we have the energy and the spark, different ways of getting ourselves through slumps. I have been discouraged lately (I think it’s okay to admit that, I’m sure I’m not the only one). I have not had the time or focus to create the things I want to create. And apparently need to create, because they are tugging at me like children, and haunting me like middle-of-the-night regrets and memories: Coming to me glancingly when I’m thinking about something else or thinking about nothing. And the silences are sighingly singing to me.

I like the idea of a sigh. It’s a space between words. Like Ozu’s shots of alleys and train tracks and laundry hanging. Like gestures and small sounds and half-words in any language that don’t translate well but convey true emotion beyond rational expression. It’s almost more meaningful than any actual word. I have felt very sigh-ful lately, with end-of-summer feelings that I can’t speak, and silences that I would sing. I have not had the time. I have been sighing away my hours, and now at the close of summer I have the familiar bruising feeling of anticipation and regret.

But Tidings of Magpies is sustaining to me, and I hope to others. And as we approach our 2nd anniversary I’m encouraged, given strength, by the beauty it has become. By our strong, unshakeable, everchanging voice and by our patchwork personality. By the singings and sighings of every writer or artist who has shared their work and thoughts with us. We’re building something. We’re working on something important.

(Important is a word I think about a lot. What does it mean for work to be important? All work is important, all work! “No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) But I’m not talking here about a job of work for a wage, though I understand the value and necessity of that, believe me, I do. I do.

I’m talking about creating something big together, working together on something, something good. Something money and cynicism can’t touch, because we have no use for any of that. Something we believe in, even if it seems a little crazy. An unholy ghost building made up of dream-filled rooms and corridors leading to vistas and light. A place where we can sigh out our sentences and sing out our silences.

*From The Arte of Rhetorique, by Thomas Wilson, 1553. “Some sighes out their wordes. Some signes their sentences. Some laughes altogether, when they speake to any bodie. Some grunts like a Hogge. Some cackles like a Henne, or a Iacke Dawe. Some speakes as though they should tell in their sleeue. Some cries out so loude, that they would make a mans eares ake to heare them. Some coughes at euery worde. Some hems it out. Some spittes fire, they talke so hotly. Some makes a wrie mouth, and so they wrest out their wordes. Some whines like a Pigge. Some suppes their wordes vp, as a poore man doth his Porrage. Some noddes their head at euery sentence. An other winkes with one eye, & some with both. This man frouneth alwaies when he speakes. And other lookes euer as though hee were mad. Some cannot speake but they must goe vp and downe, or at the least be stirring their feete, as though they stood in a cockering Boate. An other will play with his cappe in his hand, and so tell his tale. Some when they speake in a great companie, will looke all one way, as I knewe a Reader in my daies, who looked in like sorte, when hee read to Scholers, whom one thought to disapoint of such his constaunt lookes: and therefore against the next day, he painted the Deuill with hornes vpon his head, in the self same place, where the Reader was wont alwaies to looke, the which straunge Monster, when the Reader sawe, he was half abashed, and turned his face an other way. Some pores vpon the ground as though they sought for pinnes.  Tullie telles of one Theophrastus Tauriscus, who is saied to declaime arsee versee. Some swelles in the face, and filles their cheekes full of winde, as though they would blowe out their wordes. Some sets forth their lippes, two inches good beyond their teeth. Some talkes as though their tongue went of pattines. Some shewes all their teeth. Some speakes in their teeth altogether. Some lets their wordes fall in their lippes, scant opening them when they speake.”