"The Opening of Veins"

The following is from Frederick Buechner and explains the thoughts behind my blog heading:

"I think of painting and music as subcutaneous arts. They get under your skin. They may get deeper than that eventually, but it takes a while, and they get there to some extent tinged by if not diluted by the conditions under which you saw them or heard them. Writing on the other hand strikes me as intravenous. As you sit there only a few inches from a printed page, the words you read go directly into the bloodstream and go into it at full strength. More than a painting you see or the music you hear, the words you read become in the very act of reading them part of who you are, especially if they are the words of exceptionally promising writers. If there is poison in the words, you are poisoned; if there is nourishment, you are nourished; if there is beauty, you are made a little more beautiful. In Hebrew the word dabhar means both word and also deed. A word doesn't merely say something, it does something. It brings something into being. It makes something happen... As I am sure you all know, what Red Smith said was more or less this: 'Writing is really quite simple; all you have to do is sit down at your typewriter and open a vein.' From the writer's vein into the reader's vein: for better or worse a transfusion." (From, The Clown in the Belfry, 1992)

My purpose in adding my thoughts to the myriad of others available throughout cyberspace is simply to open my own veins, or provide an outlet for self-expression with the hope that my own bloodflow may enhance someone else's Godward heart beat in the process.

NHim,
Dane