Does feeling mellow count? Odd question perhaps but so often it seems that I must be dealing in angst as the Weltanshauung impedes upon the Zeitgeist. Forgive the German which may have been used incorrectly. I was playing with the term angst. Playing with words instead of wringing meaning out of them. Two ways to look at the same event perhaps but with very different results. The anguished writer wrings out words like a washerwoman (feminists forgive me) of yore wringing out rags with mighty arms and a vice-like grip. The anguished writer trapped by the spirit of the age, rebelling against all comers like a tent-show wrestler, past his Champion Slapdown prime but still strong and able, eking out a future by taking on the town bully until... you know the tragic ending with the long-lost daughter coming on the scene at the last moment in order to cradle the dying wrestler's head in her lap, a tear falling from her eye. Camera moves in for the close up. Unless the wrestler is from Gaul and then he becomes the subject of an ancient Greek sculptor, Pergamon by name, copied by the Romans (those great forgers) and will live on forever reproduced in countless Art History books. So goes the writer, a Dying Gaul, seeking immortality by way of anthologies.

That is, the writer wrapped in anguish. What of the other kind. Not trapped in Romanticism. (I wish I had discovered them later in life and not in the impressionable teens.) The Romantic myth of the anguished writer may have served us ill these many years. Writers, like all heroes, live by the myths of the forefathers. Seek out Homer to live the hero's life. Who are your forefathers? Who are mine? Who are those I seek to emulate. Like a chameleon, I tend to pick up on the colors of my surroundings. Leave me too long with Shakespear and my speach patterns begin to change. Gingsberg's Howl sent me off down a strange verbal path. But what of my voice? (the mellowness is changing to introspection). This course has brought me to examine the issue of voice- the real and valid voice, the bare voice, the pure voice, the living voice--viva voce! Or some such linguistic butchering. Where is it? Or is it? Have you found your voice? The one you use to call out in the dark, not sure if you truly want an answer? Or the voice to speak love? Or the voice to... maybe not a single voice but a plurality of voices. More voices than meets the ear. A choir of voices (and they may not be so heavenly). A mellow voice in all this? I wonder. Why not? As long as it isn't as mellow as Manilow for such is the way to dullness, and excited ennui--the attempt is made but the excitement manufactured. Then the voice again. Where do I find it? Jump down my own throat and sit among the vocal cords, reaching out to pluck them like the harpist on the strings or the piano tuner with head under soundboard? Pluck, pluck and send the sound out around the world for distant pleasures.

For those who have made it this far, thank you for putting up with the ramblings. I hope you had fun.