Friday, July 29, 2011

Bare Bones


It's rare that I make my commute with nothing on the radio, no book on CD playing. For the first half of my commute this morning, I listened to Louise Erdrich read Lorrie Moore's story, Dance In America via the New Yorker fiction podcast and afterwards my mind was too blown to take in anything else. I flipped off the car stereo and drove the rest of the way in silence. I paid attention to the fire truck racing along the frontage road, an ambulance solemnly following. I thought about the difference between He leaves the room and He walks out of the room. I thought about secrets, and the way a story can be told by isolating pieces of information, leaving things out, like in a photograph where what makes it beautiful is the lack of extraneous details.

2 comments:

Barb said...

Beautiful. For some reason this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – ah, that is where the art resides!” Arthur Schnabel

Heather said...

I love that quote - and actually that's what Pam's essay said.