On Writing and Failure by Stephen Marche

 

"John Keats wrote 'Ode on Melancholy' for me. Specifically for me at fifteen...He may not have known it but he did. And I do not know who I am writing this for, or for what time, or to what purpose. But there is a deep longing in me—and it's not a lie, not a fraud—to make these words for you. These ephemeral connections are the substance of victory, to belong to a constellation of meanings, to alleviate a specific, minuscule cosmic loneliness."