Untitled (Banjo Player and Dancing Woman), 1920's, e. e. cummings.
Dear Beloved Reader,
I have been treasuring this little trio of words for about a year now; long felt want. Let's look at them this way:
long
felt
want
So much of it is the sound, things that poets and academics would know what to call- vowel sounds, meters, stressed syllables, a bunch of stuff we don't need to discuss. Except, and this is a big exception, if it helps us to love this phrase more deeply. In that case, have at it, English Majors, Creative Writing Folks, Scholars of all kinds.
I have been waiting, I suppose, for the moment to be right to bring it to you, but that's not quite it either. I have been waiting to tell you about it through the lens of Another Thing. A Like Thing. I often want to bundle the greatness into a larger package; to send you not one great thing, but two, or even three or more.
So, I wait for Another Thing. Sometimes it is a long wait.
I have been working on some projects that are kind of odd, they kind of don't have beginnings, or even ends. The projects are for the long time- do a little one day, then leave it for a week or so. That kind of pace. The project I will begin soon is changing my address book. I have sewn a new cover for a new book, and it is time to transfer in all the names and locations of the people that are not dead (physically or metaphorically- it was a tough couple of years, mind you; many old acquaintances and objects have moved from the category of Why Do I Still Have This to I Threw That Out. Don't worry, not your name, of course!).*
This project (and others like it: example: painting the closet doors a new color) are Long Felt Wants. I do worry a little, because, well, I think I might be lonely if I never worried at all, that the Want may not end when the projects do.
As usual, I am telling you all this, so that I can figure out what I might mean by all of it. Have I told you lately how much you mean to me? I thought not. Please try to remember it!
But, back to the phrase. I lifted it from e. e. cummings' book The Enormous Room. I am trying not to read old white men, as you know, but this book and perhaps all of e. e. cummings' work shall have to be an exception- let us think of him/them as an honorary non-white brown/black non-binary kind of a they author, because, ooh, it's a book recording a great beauty and love for humans.
* Don't you just love that we can put !). down like that and no one to correct us?? Writing is the best, just like painting or drawing, because we are always building another world to reign as Queen in.
