Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Evensong.....

I was posting today on V7N an on-line web community because someone had asked for a cure for writer's block.  It's a tough ailment and as many of us know there are few things that can claim to be the EX-LAX of the thought process.

Anyway, one of my suggestions was to use a quick trick from Edward de Bono.  He did a lot of work on lateral thinking and is revered in the area of business advertising and marketing. Anyway one of his suggestions to break the log jam of the thought process and to get things moving again is to use a random dictionary search. It goes like this:
1. Note the number of pages in your dictionary and approximately the number of words per double page spread. 
2. Ask someone (or find another random number that you can us) to give you a number between 25 - and ( the number of pages in your dictionary)  I chose the number 25 to skip over all the intro pages.  Then ask for another number between 1 and the approximate number of words in a double page spread.
3. Open your dictionary to the page of the first number i.e. page 246  and then count down the words to the second number i.e.17. Use this word in your next post or writing exercise.

It was a slow day so I decided to try it...again.  I found one of my dictionaries.  I have many, including a huge "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary."  I guess that it is considered shorter because it is just one book - though rather large.  The full Oxford Dictionary is the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  I guess that we have a lot to say and that begs the question, "Why do any of us have writer's block"!!!!!

OK back to reality or the manipulation, thereof.  I found the word evening.  Actually there were a lot of related words - eventide, evensong, eventually;  I stopped at eviscerate.  OK I cheat.  I wasn't going to use eviscerate in a blog post, even though my computer had caught a full scale Trojan virus today and believe me I could have taken the innards out of anyone near enough.  Fortunately my computer person was contactable and we were able to do a system restore over the phone within half an hour.

Although the aspects for the day weren't that great, I wasn't going to read any entrails to see what the future had in store.  Instead I decided on the word "evensong."  I love music and spiritual music has a kind of folk quality to it, which I love.  I did, however come across a posting of a Jazz evensong. Now maybe a night out at the church for an evening of Jazz vespers is what the religious community needs to shepherd a few us back.

Anyway for the must part evening prayers, for me has been the meditation I do when I am working on a little plain knitting - not to be confused with plainsong.  Purl rows have to be the plainsong of evening vespers. We knit the garments that clothe the body as we conjure the thoughts that nurture the soul.

Here's a little Evensong from Ely Cathedral Cambridge.

Have an auspicious evening!!!

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