We Shouldn't Have Been So Scornful; We

Perhaps I Write For No One. Perhaps For The Same Person Children Are Writing For When They Scrawl Their Names In The Snow.

Storytelling Is A Very Old Human Skill That Gives Us An Evolutionary Advantage. If You Can Tell Young People How You Kill An Emu, Acted Out In Song Or Dance, Or That Uncle George Was Eaten By A Croc Over There, Don't Go There To Swim, Then Those Young People Don't Have To Find Out By Trial And Error.

Books Are Frozen Voices, In The Same Way That Musical Scores Are Frozen Music. The Score Is A Way Of Transmitting The Music To Someone Who Can Play It, Releasing It Into The Air Where It Can Once More Be Heard. And The Black Alphabet Marks On The Page Represent Words That Were Once Spoken, If Only In The Writer's Head. They Lie There Inert Until A Reader Comes Along And Transforms The Letters Into Living Sounds. The Reader Is The Musician Of The Book: Each Reader May Read The Same Text, Just As Each Violinist Plays The Same Piece, But Each Interpretation Is Different.

Eating Is Our Earliest Metaphor, Preceding Our Consciousness Of Gender Difference, Race, Nationality, And Language. We Eat Before We Talk.

At The Very Least We Want A Witness. We Can't Stand The Idea Of Our Own Voices Falling Silent Finally, Like A Radio Running Down.