Look Back/Look Forward

"We keep losing the great ones."

"The real problem is, we aren't replacing them."

—overheard 19 February 2016

Yesterday was a rough day for literature. We lost two greats, each notable for their own very particular reasons, each having made contributions to our general humanitarian fund which are so significant that to date we cannot measure their weight.

Harper Lee, our mockingbird, fell from her Southern branches, but whenever we search the knotholes in our neighbors' trunks, we'll find her wisdom and the hope she left us; her story was startlingly clear and shone bright lights on even the darkest walks home.

Umberto Eco, who refused to name the rose and who set Foucault's pendulum in motion, has left us sprawling catacombs of difficult ideas and a deep faith that we'll find our own way through them.

We have lost two glittering minds and stalwart hearts—and, far worse, we have lost their service to mankind. The time is passed when we could have expressed our gratitude, explored the libraries of their minds, touched them the way they touched us. But they've left us great gifts and opened new roads. The least we can do is unpackage those gifts and set down those roads ourselves, charting the trails and byroutes we encounter along our shining way.

It's true that we're losing the great ones—every day. But it's equally true that our loss is not one of deep sorrow and despair. Ms Lee and Sig. Eco both did great works for their fellow man, and each deserves canonized rest. Our failure is not in their passing. Our failure is in our inability—or our refusal—to climb into their mythical skins, walk around a while, and join their quest for truth and beauty. It is hard work, and most often thankless. It is service through dangerous exploration of a treacherous and lonely country. It is frightening and exhilarating work on par with scaling Everest or diving the Mariana, and it is by necessity solitary work. It's no wonder our rolls are clearing.

But it's our responsibility—each and every one of us—to reach out and touch that work, to see if it resonates within us, to learn if we feel a duty and a calling to keep seeking selflessly and tirelessly and without expectation of recognition. It is our far greater responsibility to find those already on foreign roads and to cherish them, celebrate them, and elevate them into our public conversation. We keep losing the great ones. But we should be ashamed to leave their places empty, to stare woefully at the flags they planted without ever reaching out to touch a higher peak and a more tangled corner, and without casting our eyes in other directions to acknowledge natural successors in our midst.

Today, DavidSilvester.com officially goes live. There may be nothing in these pages to recommend celebration or anthologization, but hopefully you'll find opportunities for reflection, conversation, and great imagined voyages into worlds both familiar and alien.

In recognition of the lives of Harper Lee, Umberto Eco, and countless other travelers we've left along the way home, David Silvester has made his work available free of charge for a limited time. Enjoy the journey. Make more friends along the way.