The Cloud Book

Critique:
"The Cloud Book"
by =Solarune

Your piece is very, very good. I'll first say I enjoyed it even before I read your 'monster comment' or followed the link there for the Musical Map prompt, to the solo cello of a piece I don't know. I do know I like the cello very much - the flute too. Because I use this Critique Box (and I was a bit foolish and didn't take notes of questions you asked) I no longer see the questions.

But I can still read "The Cloud Book" and recall the music from the link, which is about a man who put his books in currah (sp?) along with a sheep -at least one sheep- which put a hoof through the floor of that boat (aren't they round, like some clouds... and don't clouds often resemble sheep?) which then sank, presumably with all aboard.

So both sheep (the cloud in the music?) and books (the man's treasured leather-bound books) were lost in the ocean, in some part of it anyway.

In your piece, the images begin with extreme youth, when clouds first tell stories and people are more willing to tell those stories to each other aloud. Children often do so. "I see __" and "Then that cloud is ___" etc.

Some grownups do too, often when on a picnic, either courting, or with their own children.

This piece begins with bitter memory, so bitter it's like "bile" and causes a nearly horrific action when the woman Anna asks after the narrator's well-being. He is so angered at the thought of what readers learn later is his exile, that an offer of bread in place of warmth causes the narrator to feel Anna's neck "butterfly" - a gorgeous image in a scary situation.

The juxtaposition of beautiful images, of greenery and burned land, of home and beauty against that of only a new brown river and cold gray clouds works very well. Even without a comment by the writer.

How apt it is that the narrator and his (love? maid? the only person who would leave with him? another reader?) Anna should strip down (they're exiled! they have nothing important left to them! they miss home already! they are alone!) ..strip down and submerge themselves in a muddy river, holding on to the roots of a tree...

These images make me think of how mankind emerges from mud in many scientific views and also in many old tales, and also how one who is exiled needs to hang onto any roots one can, for roots are all that are left of the homeland, of the books and of the printed page, of the mother and grandmother, the brother and gray-slate house...

These are the roots of the narrator's existence, and he'll hang onto them until "arms and legs are numb"...Anna and the narrator must have their roots firmly in hand and the mud of the river to then climb out of, before they can even think about beginning again.

You let the narrator begin again with the sentences at the end:

"When I was very young, I stared up at the sky and saw shapes in it, the stories.

"We climbed out of the river."

This image, to me, leaves me hopeful and, though full of pity for the great losses incurred, still hoping for what appear to be a man and woman (surely the narrator is a man, with his tendency toward both honesty and sudden, even violent impulses) who let a muddy river be cried in, lets himself NOT break the roots of home (felt in a river like his mother's bones) and then climb out, recalling the stories told in clouds.

You wrote a wonderful Musical Map piece. I read it a few days ago actually, and didn't comment then, but had to return and read it again. It's the kind of story that lowers itself into the mind, like a cloud on a horizon, or a new horizon, or a cow lowing goodbye, because in such a place as the burning, dusty land and climbing form roots and mud show there will come new families and stories will to continue to be told. Why? Because both clouds and books have already been read.

I hope I've answered your questions in some way. I know I repeated your piece more than I usually do in a critique, but it's so full of imagery, I wanted to use it to show you what I saw / felt / read in it. Thank you.