Epigraph for My Upcoming Memoir

writing Blaise Kielar

In silvis viva silui,
Canora iam mortua cano.

Alive in the forest I was silent,

Now in death I sing melodies.

Inscription found on ornamented stringed instruments, especially violins, starting in the 1500s.

Can also apply to the trees whose pulp made the pages you now hold.

Once it is published, I envision this at the beginning of my memoir Be Heard: The Quiet Kid Who Started the World’s Loudest Violin Shop, by D. Blaise Kielar

Share

Blaise Kielar received Honorable Mention in the 2022 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize for an excerpt from his memoir in progress, "Be Heard: The Quiet Kid Who Started the World’s Loudest Violin Shop." He opened Chapel Hill’s first violin shop in 1978 and retired from a music retail career by transitioning Electric Violin Shop into the first worker-owned co-op music store in the United States. He plays jazz violin and clarinet in several bands and leads the Bulltown Strutters, Durham’s community New Orleans brass band.