It Speaks to Me

What attracts us to certain artworks? Whether book or stage production, painting or photograph, dancing or theatre, singing or instrumental music, there has to be something with which we can connect for the work to have any meaning for us as individuals.Photo: Book of Languages

Some of those connections are obvious: an author with whose philosophy or politics I tend to agree is more likely to produce a book or script I enjoy than one whose beliefs are wildly different from mine; if I favor a specific style or period or medium, I’ll probably always find the works within them resonating in my heart more often than those from unfamiliar or less loved types.Photo: Familiar Passages

Other attractions might be more tenuous or less overt. I read a whole lot online nowadays, both factual and fictional, but I still enjoy reading magazines and books, and there is no digital substitute quite yet for the fine roughness of antique paper pages in my hands and the musty scent of old books.

17 thoughts on “It Speaks to Me

    • It’s just an old language primer for youngsters, but it looks more like a spell book from Harry Potter, doesn’t it? I think that’s part of the allure of really old books; not so much that the content is substantially different from anything I’d pick up in a modern paperback, but that the old typesetting, the antique illustrations, and the air (literal and otherwise) of ancient wisdom all conspire to make me see the content from a different perspective, and even a language arts manual becomes something mysterious and magical. 🙂

  1. I so agree, Kathryn. Yes, I have my fair share of eBooks and eMagazines but nothing will ever replace the feel of the page or the sound made when that page is turned. Yes, I’m old-fashioned. Heck! I miss the sound that rotary dial phones made after each of the then 7 numbers were dialed.

    • Even ones I can’t read perfectly (because of the undecipherable Fraktur typeface, because of the old versions of the language, because of the foreign language, or any combination of those things!) feel and smell so good they compel me to try to read them as best I can. 😉

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