Cellar Door

[nny]

I saw posters for a band called 'Cellar Door' and I vaguely wondered if they'd insist they were called that before Donnie Darko.

It seems strange to me that people could pick out one word, two words, variartions of alliteration or rhyme and say-- this. This is the pinnacle. This is the most beautiful word/pair of words/phrase in my language. This is where perfection lies.

How can it ever be possible to say that?

I love words. I don't say I'm necessarily good with them, nor that I know as many as I should or as many as I'd like to, but I appreciate their beauty. And every day and everything I read I learn a new word, a new phrase, and I underline or I carefully copy out in my small, neat writing (the writing, I think, of a sensible person. Not the writing of an artist or a genius, but of someone who wants to cause as little trouble as possible, someone who Doesn't Want To Be A Bother. But perhaps I'm projecting.) But I would never say that those words, that phrase, was the end of my search. I would never feel that I had found it.

My name is Bethany. Nothing interesting or spectacular - I don't think there's anything particularly musical about it, but if Paul Bettany were to say it into my ear I might possibly die of lust. An unknown actor I'll probably never see again almost made me cry saying 'And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?' In the right context, 'cornetto' can be the funniest thing I've ever heard.

So what is my point? My point, I think, is that there aren't beautiful things, beautiful words; there are beautiful moments. And they keep happening, all the time, and catch you unawares, and you can never say that this, this is it, because you don't know what will happen next. So keep looking. Allow yourself to see them.

Comments

[celtic_maenad]

on the subject of moments... and a while back you asking to be rec'ed music... and the Sondheim Musicals that are teh wonderfulness... Find a copy of *all* of Into the Woods, if you don't already have one. Nick it if you gotta. (have to go to work soon or would yousendit to you).

"Oh if life were only moments... even now and then a bad one.
But if life were only moments... then we'd never know we'd had one."

er... yeah.

[thedivinegoat.livejournal.com]

I love the word cadence.

Cadence.

[campkilkare]

Cellardoor was Tolkien's favorite English word. (Apparently he considered it one word?) So that's possibly where the name is from, if not Donnie Darko.

If I have a favorite word I can't think of it right now.

[cyanei.livejournal.com]

Synaesthesia changes the way I relate to words, I think. To me, the context doesn't nessessarily mean anything to what I will think of a word. "Cheerfully" is a favourite word because it smells like happy lemons and is a pretty shade of yellow. "Squelch" makes me ill because it feels like rubbery things roiling in my stomache. "Ciceronianus" smells like navy blue, which is really difficult to explain (cloves, cello music, black patent leather?) but possibly the most amazing smell on the planet. So the way I experience things means that maybe, for me, there is a pinnacle.

Of course, there's still that possibility that I'll find a word that feels better or smells nicer, so I am always going to keep looking, and allowing myself to find them. ( :