During the last several years, I have pursued a goal to achieve a prize offered by the Space Coast Writers’ Guild, the ARGO award, presented for the best novel written in the last two years, primarily set in Florida. After participating in the National Novel Writing Month goal of completing fifteen-hundred word drafts during succeeding Novembers, I will turn my efforts to another pursuit I’ve procrastinated about and put off far too long.
I have it on pretty good authority that I’ve succeeded in placing second for several years in a row in my first goal, and just received the familiar “I’m sorry to inform you that. . .” email, this November I’m going to explore another dream—that of researching and writing on the fascinating topic of the “music of the spheres” concept beginning with Pythagoras’s theory from Ancient Greece, through John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” poem, through hymnwriters such as Maltbie D. Babcock, and in scripture.
I first explored this theme as a twenty-five-year-old Masters Degree program student at Hofstra University. While I studied art, history, Renaissance culture, poetry, and other topics, I centered my required thesis around John Milton’s use of music in his poetry. Once I finished the project and attained the degree, my professional and personal life took over and I’ve given the topic of “music of the spheres” little thought until now.
The past year I have concentrated on memoir-writing with seniors at my new residence, Glenbrooke Senior Living in Palm Bay, Florida. We are about to publish our third anthology. My plethora of books I’ve self-published fills bookshelves. I have, to date, published thirty-three books, and contributed work to twenty-some anthologies by several publishers. I want to return to the poetic realm for a while.
I’ve enjoyed writing personal devotional Psalms, am itching to discover music allusions through the Bible in honor of my children’s careers as music professionals, and I want to concentrate on my admiration for nature and what more the natural world wants to teach me. “Music of the Spheres” will prove interesting through the month of November as I recuperate from hip surgery and have time to put other things aside for a while and be self-absorbed.
The timing is interesting to me. Let this piece remind us. Recently, a horrid hurricane ravaged our area of the world. Lest we forget, “his” name was Milton. And yes, that moniker is hated to many right now. But I fondly remember reading John Milton’s poetry and admiring it for its depth of meaning, its perfection in imagery, its structure, and its authenticity relating to Christianity. I’m at a place where I want to think about it some more, so this wandering preface allows me to discover where it leads.
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.com) will be a bit different this year. The counting of words toward completion of a project will give me goals, but no one needs know but you, Dear Reader, that it’s not about characters in a story, a plot line, a setting limited to Florida, pacing, theme development, and events leading to a climax. It’s about exploring a topic to see where it goes. Join me on my journey.
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