Writing The Memory Room, which is psychological and introspective, I pictured the book as a long sustained musical composition for solo cello, because the cello is so good at being introspective. I specifically thought of Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello. I didn’t know anything about “being a writer” or that literature was supposed to be the thing that inspired me the most. This was never true and still isn’t true for me. But these Bach Suites were, for me, a perfect translation. My main character, Barbara, sitting alone on a stage playing the Suites for 500 pages. And lots of silence in between. Lots of the white of the page.

When I began to add other characters, the story seemed like a concerto. One instrument with a small orchestra. Barbara now with her neighbor Josephine, the therapist who remains unnamed, her mother, father, siblings, boyfriend, two nuns living in the nearby convent. I thought the book was finished.

Then, by happy accident, I discovered the astonishing poetry of Paul Celan through a lecture by the brilliant John Felstiner from Stanford.  Celan’s  principal translator. My text demanded I include his voice. So I did. I added phrases from his poems. And with Celan’s deep ambivalence toward his own Jewish faith, and his biblical vocabulary, I found a bridge back to the Psalms I’d grown up with and added Psalm phrases to my text too. What was a solo cello voice, then cello with small orchestra, a concerto, I had a full orchestra! It all felt natural. And necessary. And super distilled and minimal. Now I had many voices all talking to each other! Once this all happened, I realized the book was finally finished and ready to go out into the world.

For me, the white contains already contains everything that that ink can ever deliver. I realize this is idiosyncratic . But for me, my finest book is a ream of plain white sheets. What we add with the ink we apply must relate to that white, must be as beautiful as that white. And so we shape that white, that silence.  Because in it, in the voice of silence itself, all music is found.