I had the enormous good fortune to see Josh Ritter give a reading tonight from his debut novel, Bright’s Passage. The book itself sounds wonderful–the passages he read were full of humor and depth and the sharp detail I know from his songwriting. During the Q&A portion of the event, he said something I need to chew on for a while, which was this:
Maybe what makes us human is our ability to be confused.
Animals, he argued, don’t appear to experience moral quandary–and that’s part of what both draws us to them and keeps us from truly understanding their experience.
It’s part of what Mark Twain got right–this paradox of loving a country, a place, its people, while being utterly confounded by them–and what makes his work so wise and so rich.
Gotta think on this one for a bit.
Now, enjoy some music:
