So what’s the difference between singing and saying?

A no-brainer, you may reply, any grown-up knows: a song is a song, pretty without utility, and speech is speech, functional but seldom fun. Speech speaks to the head, song to the heart. Speech means what it says, a song more than its text.

Obviously! Yet dig a little, trying to explain the difference, and mysteries multiply, clarity clouds. Is a poem singing or saying? Why is music more memorable than prose? Are the Gettysburg Address or the first sentences of Pride and Prejudice poetry or prose? Why is so much wannabe music unmemorable (and unsingable)? Most animals sing in their way but only humans, best we know, speak more than a few words: why? Is articulation an advantage or handicap? Blessing or curse?

Questions self-proliferate. That is the way with speech. One idea leads to the next in incessant definition. The sky is blue. What do you mean by blue? Why is blue different from yellow? What is color, after all? “It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is” (President Bill Clinton). Songs pose no follow-up questions, demand no clarifications. Either they sing to you or not, case closed.

The advantage of articulation is comprehension. Logic is the operating system of speech: if A is true, then B, then C, with each clarification enlarging our understanding. “Explain yourself” is an endless occupation (and my epitaph). The more I excavate sense, the more complexity I unearth, compounding bewilderment. The more we know, the less we can be sure: a paradox.

Speech is corruptible as music isn’t. A song cannot lie. Evildoers and mischief-makers use speech to delude. The spread of public mendacity in my lifetime staggers me, as it should all of us, only it doesn’t seem to. “Never tell a lie” insensibly morphed into “never tell an inconvenient truth.” “Honest politician” teeters on the verge of oxymoron.

In recent years I’ve found myself needing poems more and more. Poems have been essential nutrients for me since I was sixteen and my father died. Poems console as prose cannot. A good poem rocks you in its arms and murmurs blandishments. A good poem is true as music is, with an assurance that defies debate. “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music” wrote Walter Paton famously. “For while in all other kinds of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.” Poems are words aspiring to the condition of music.

Poems, I’m guessing, are a purgative for the crud that crowds my mind. A poem appeals to what is noble in our nature, yearnings we share. A good poem does not anger, insult, mislead, abuse. It does not debate “what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” It is as inarguable as a sob. I’ve wondered since first enchantment what gives a good poem its mysterious authority. (Good poems are rare.) I have some thoughts, but I’ll never know. Love is no less inexplicable.

My writing aspires to the condition of music. Aspiration does not equal achievement: “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” I write not to inform, reform, rebuke – not for any practical purpose – but to console, delight, embrace. I do not want to tell you anything, I want to be together with you using words. I have no idea how to do this, only that this magic having been performed – on me – it might be. If whales can sing, why not I?