'Regal Vellichor'

Mostly Musty

This COVID-19 pandemic situation has nudged me back towards reading books. So it seems appropriate that the word we're hijacking for song titles is vellichor.

vellichor 

n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

The most recent book I read is about the many diasporas of humanity out of Africa. It seems long ago - probably about 60,000 years ago that we left Africa as Homo Sapiens. Judging by how lacking in wisdom humanity is, clearly that time has not gone towards accumulating a whole wisdom.

I realise as I write this entry that my habit of reading books gave way to a habit of producing music.It is ironic somewhat that one goes from a phase of life where there is nothing one can do to produce what they want to produce and so one must spend time devouring texts to enrich one's mind; and then to a phase of life where one has the means of production so it is incumbent upon one to keep producing as much as one can using all the available time at hand.

All the same I would like to go back to reading in equal measure. It's not that I have stopped liking the producing part, it is just that I do miss spending time with books. Reading is great - even the reading of somewhat-crappy-books.



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