Comfort comes in many forms. After a hard couple of weeks, a random link took me to an interview with Neil Gaiman, and I remembered that I hadn't yet chosen a first sentence from one of my favorite authors. Anansi Boys, like Gaiman's work often does, has moments of horror, and yet, the voice that tells that horror comforts me.
The first sentence of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys is: "It begins, as most things begin, with a song."
The tension here is in the word "begins." Something is beginning. We don't yet know what. We don't know what characters will face it. We don't know where or when. So far, we have very few details.
The next phrase, "as most things begin," is a statement about the shape of the world. It claims that most things that begin all start in the same way. Most things are alike. There is pattern to the universe. This is a not exactly a creation myth, but a statement of faith about creations: Most things have the same genesis.
The last phrase is "with a song." The word "song" falls in the strong, final position, but it is not a word that increases tension. A song is art rather than danger. This placement shows that songs are important – Gaiman uses the last word to emphasize creation rather than suspense.
Perhaps that is why I find him comforting. The world, he tells me, even in this one sentence, has danger (it begins) and it also has patterns (as most things begin) and creation (song). Gaiman's epic comic series, Sandman, about the king of dreams and stories, reminded me that storytelling mattered at a time when I had lost faith. His "Make Good Art" speech also reached me at a moment when I needed it. He tells good stories that tell us we can also make art. I need to hear that, now and then.
Keep creating, folks. It matters.
With all my best wishes, Anna
Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash