Laura Feibush, NJ Winner Level III

Letter to Willa Cathert, author of The Song of the Lark

Dear Willa,

I hope that in my life I will one day see the luminous sand-hills of Colorado.  I hope one day to climb to the ancient caves of the cliff dweller Indians of Arizona.  Until then, though, I will not be too dissatisfied.  Having read The Song of the Lark, it feels as though I have already been there.  In it, I followed Thea from when she was a child, collecting crystals and filling the skies of Moonstone with piano music, to when she was a disillusioned artist of the big cities.

Moonstone is even smaller than my own Pennington.  My music teacher declares, grinning, that time forgot this little town.  I disagreed at first, as would Thea if she were told the same about Moonstone.  Then, however, Thea and I discovered New York, Chicago, Dresden, and Berlin, all of which radiate fiercely the energy of modernity and progress.  In the course of our lives, as we must be, we were both ushered into bigger, tougher worlds than the ones we first knew.  The Song of the Lark shed light, perhaps for the first time, on the effects of this inevitable progression.  In your eyes, Willa, they were frightening.

I wonder how you know about this, anyway. You were born in Virginia, went to school in small-town Nebraska, and only plunged into Pittsburgh and Europe’s big cities as a successful, opinionated adult.  What I can be sure of is that you love your land, your real land:  the early western United States.  I can tell because your love penetrates every sentence you write.  Thea loved her land, too, her Moonstone, Colorado.  This is where she begins:  a child, brimming with passion and a concerned, overwhelming love of life.  She is blissfully steeped in the vivid western sunrises, the old music of Wunsch, the moonflowers growing over the Mexican adobe houses, and the sparkling reflection of the sun off the bits of mica in the soil.  These colors and textures were the brilliant backdrop of her childhood.  Like Dr. Archie, this is the Thea I love, most richly textured with all the feelings of youth.  In the end, I think it is this Thea she strived to become again.

I remember you telling me once that artists living away from their land were “just unconscious imposters.”  When you gave Thea that elusive element called natural talent, you sent her on a journey, and through your writing, I followed her.  First we went to Chicago.  I stood on the other side of the piano that fateful night she sang for Harsanyi, when the eagle of her voice was uncovered.  I heard from the doorway all the lessons she took with Madison Bowers.  Then I watched her change.  Until now, the river of her life had carried her on currents of hopeful determination, but here the water grew murky.  She looked into the eyes of failure and bitterness, and she adopted a skinned, jaded outlook on life.  Before my eyes, the Thea I knew disappeared.

When I ventured into high school, I took my first wide-eyed look around.  The water surrounding me grew murky, too, at first by imperceptible changes in hue.  I not only battled academic, psychological, and medical foes, I battled the voice that grew louder in me with each passing day.  “There are a thousand places I’d rather be,” it whispered at first. Finally, it cried desperately, “I wish I were anywhere but here!”  A fear was born in me, similar to the fear that sprouted when I followed Thea through her life in The Song of the Lark.  It asks, frightened to hear the answer, “What if I have left the best of life behind?”  The simplistic oblivion of youth, which cannot be acknowledged before it is gone, what if that was all living was for, the rest being a chore which must unfortunately be completed?

Somewhete in the course of these broodings, it occurred to me that I must be very, very, careful.  Thea lost herself, and in the end could not find happiness.  I don’t know why you made her do it, Willa, maybe it was out of your control, like a creature with a mind of its own.  For whatever reason, it is a sobering warning.  Careful, careful, or without knowing it, one might lose truly the most important things in life, which differ from person to person.  In Thea, they were like the qualitities of youth, barely defined before they were lost.  In me, there is still much hope for freedom and fraternity, for duty mixed with happiness.

This story is sound work, Willa.  Sometimes when I read it, I could hear your voice in the words, gentle and lilting as a songbirg.

Always yours,
Laura