In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else I've ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination.
What I was trying to convey there was the kind of waste land that was left after the war. It was a bit like one always thinks of war, you know, stark scenery and no birds, no trees, no leaves, nothing living. And just emptiness.
People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.
In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little children from whom all song is gone?
The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds - the birds were chickens and the flowers dried sunflowers rattling against a wall.
The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring.
How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
The show is being changed right now, by the way. Jeff Burke is doing it for the Magic Kingdom. And I think it will be better, with new birds, master of ceremonies, etc.
