The first time it was played, it was not understood. The second time it was played, it was not understood. The third time it was played, it was not understood. But by now the phrase and the lack of understanding that accompanied it had become familiar. So familiar, in fact, that in time the phrase came to represent, in their minds, all that they could not understand about it. Unable thereby to limit its meaning to the boundaries of itself, they watched its claims drain out of it and other, solitary things take new heart for its hollowness and draw together in its shelter. Ultimately, nothing was left except the relationship of the things about it to one another – a relationship only meaningful so long as the promise holds of emptiness between them, and thereby the phrase too is promised something by way of capacity – its right to represent simultaneously its need for and fulfillment within the objects about it.

Somewhere, in the world of life, I have a brother whom I have never talked about, and seldom spoken to, and who I do not know even now how best to describe. I imagine perhaps that in a village somewhere a man with a piece of iron has invented a song. He doesn’t know that iron and music don’t go together. I imagine this man hammering out his song, but all you can see are the sparks, and all you can think of are: horseshoes. He has a wild black beard, and, when you make a joke, he doesn’t laugh. Instead he looks at you with an expression that cannot be explained, and which easily reaches from here to the hills, so tranquil yet dependable is the relationship these places sustain by its proximity. He must know that whatever he says will not be faithfully represented; saying nothing, though, is only calumny of another kind. Instead, he strikes the song of the iron, which in time will come to mean what it means, and indeed there seems a natural affinity between them, a sense of mutual propriety and comradeship, so that it’s hard to believe the song will ever leave the valley without him.