Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2021  Vol. 20  No. 1
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back STEPHEN O’DONNELL

Reasons to Write

For the same reason our forebears sat nights by firelight and told tales and cut stories into the stone, I do it. And to do it is to cry out in the brief break in the vacuum of time between birth and death. I do it to escape entropy, however briefly, and I do it to escape from or return to reality, and I do it to have reality recast in the mind of another, even if only momentarily. And to do it is to feel naked without a notepad and a good pen in your pocket.

And I do it as a stand against the heat death of the universe and I like to do it after three days of hard drinking when the bad dreams start to arrive. And I like to do it to different types of music and old film scores, and I do it to square up to and stare down the vaunted and the dead.

I do it to attempt to make something that might last. And I do it to be counted among the countless before me and the countless to come after me, until we are no longer ourselves anymore. I do it to tell a good tale well.  


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