First Desires - C.K. Williams

First Desires

It was like listening to the record of a symphony before you knew anything at all about the music,
what the instruments might sound like, look like, what portion of the orchestra each represented:
there were only volumes and velocities, thickenings and thinnings, the winding cries of change
that seemed to touch within you, through your body, to be part of you and then apart from you.
And even when you’d learned the grainy timbre of the single violin, the aching arpeggios of the horn,
when you tried again there were still uneases and confusions left, an ache, a sense of longing
that held you in chromatic dissonance, droning on beyond the dominant’s resolve into the tonic,
as though there were a flaw of logic in the structure, or in (you knew it was more likely) you.

- C.K. Williams, August 25, 1986