Hello?

Recently I had a conversation with a writer (who was, at the same time, magically making my roots disappear) about the writer's essential need for readers.  To paraphrase, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?  Or, in writer's terms, if a piece lies in a drawer and there are no eyes to read it, no mind to absorb it, no heart to feel it, does it really exist or is it merely black ink on a white page?

Some days later I am still pondering this question and thinking about that vital element of writing:  dialogue.  For isn't that what it's all about?  One mind having a dialogue with another.

Even the best of books, the most scintillating of stories, if left to itself on a shelf, is a dry, dusty tome with no sound track.  But pick up that book, even if it's simply to move it from one pile to another, open that cover and scan any page--the instant engagement of gray matter with printed matter creates a kinetic energy that cannot be duplicated.  

Some of my best conversations have been with writers through the pages of their books, each dialogue as individual and unique as the writer himself.  Compare reading Ray Bradbury's galloping, breathless, electric prose to the thoughtful, Aristotelian brick-by-brick work of Wendell Berry.  My reader's brain is put through the paces of blood-thumping aerobics and the sinewy stretches of classic yoga.   

But in order for a dialogue to exist there must be a corresponding response, a give and take of communication.   And respond I do--either by actual letter through the mail, or in my journal, or in my own writing, or even on this blog.  The drawers of writers are stuffed with dialogue--between themselves and other writers, between themselves and their readers--a readership of one will do.  Because eventually somebody will come along and clean out that drawer, pick up those pages, and a connection will be made, a dialogue will begin.

Another tree will fall and another ear will hear.