When I look back to that period of my childhood which was the transition from the world of sound to a world of silence, I have some recollection of order, but far more of chaos, of a dismembering of what was once whole, of a disintegrating of solidity, of the abstract where before was the concrete. I was like a bit of pollen, that, torn from the mother flower, floats about impotent, yet capable of bringing about a greater creation when it comes in contact with an affinity; I was like an anchor slipping distressingly through an oozy bottom trying vainly to strike into a firmer bed.

—from Mickey’s Diary