Lane von Herzen: The Language of the Heart

My Third Novel's Conclusion, My Heartbreak

My heart begins to break when I think about completing this particular book -- because this narrative has sustained me like no other story I've known. It's both more personal and more universal than my other works. But beyond memory and archetype, it's a cri-de-coeur about needing to become the person one is destined to be. And in the writing, I have met my own life's work, my own fated journey -- having the sense all the while that the pages are suffused with a resonance, an energy, an electrified field that defies explanation. Writers hope and pray to be overtaken by a work in this way -- to be conscripted into passionate service of a profound story. To experience it even once in a lifetime seems a great privilege. I still have several months before this novel is complete, and this constitutes my reprieve. Because I'm not ready for the beauty to end.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Language of the Heart

Jo-Ellen Trilling has painted this captivating work, Prayers from Earth. I love her vision of the physical and meta-physical intertwining here, the prayers interweaving with the vermicelli, shaping the noodles into a script that we can, very nearly, read for ourselves. She writes,

I am compelled now and forever to check the vermicelli stuck to the bottom of my pots in case there is a message spelled out.

A joyful and poetic capturing of the book. Thank you for honoring us with this work, Ms. Trilling!