“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.”
In honour of one of my favourite writers, and because I also wanted to test out the functionality of Substack’s audio features, I’m doing something a little different for this month’s edition of The Ansible. All being well, I hope to narrate future editions of The Ansible so you can listen, as well as read.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a searing and brutal parable, one whose provocative impact far outlasts it’s brevity. Reading it aloud only increases it’s resonance. I am struck by something new each time I read it, and I’ve been thinking of it a lot the past few months.
On Saying the unsayable.
And Who gets to speak/Who gets to be heard/What could be different.