[Can we hear silence? Well, I dunno; the gods know I’m no authority on hearing things. But here’s a Spotify playlist of pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s recordings of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” Feel free to pick and choose — the complete cycle as presented here is well over an hour long — or to just let the thing play in the background as you make your way through the day. But try to hear not only the notes themselves, but what’s going on in the split-seconds scattered among the notes; anticipate and catch yourself in the act of “hearing” them.]
From whiskey river:
The Moment
Oh, the coming-out-of-nowhere moment
when, nothing
happens
no what-have-I-to-do-today-list
maybe half a moment
the rush of traffic stops.
The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be
slows to silence,
the white cotton curtains hanging still.
(Marie Howe [source])
…and (italicized portion):
Stephen Hawking… found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child’s play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now… To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say: ‘Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and likes you no matter what you are.
(Ted Chiang, quoting Kurt Vonnegut [source])
Not from whiskey river:
Every cop who’s been undercover knows there’s nothing in the world quite like the day before you go into a job. I figure astronauts on countdown know the feeling, and parachute regiments lining up for the jump. The light turns dazzling and unbreakable as diamonds, every face you see is beautiful enough to take your breath away; your mind is crystal clear, every second spreads itself out in front of you in one great smooth landscape, things that have baffled you for months suddenly make perfect sense. You could drink all day and be stone-cold sober; cryptic crosswords are easy as kids’ jigsaws. That day lasts a hundred years.
(Tana French [source])
…and:
X
Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical disguise.
(Gwendolyn Brooks [source])
…and:
I came across the remarkable story of Simone Dinnerstein, who, after having some daimon in her wakened upon hearing Glenn Gould’s version of the Goldbergs, shifted her piano studies in a different direction and found her own vision for the piece. I thought that Gould would be perfection for me, but Simone’s playing had a vitality and lightness that forced me to rethink what I had enshrined. I read an interview with her in which she said that people listening to her performances were having mystical experiences…
“I grew up without any religion,” Simone told me at the beginning of our conversation. Yet she and her audiences are aware that there is something about her playing that takes you to a spiritual place. For having been brought up without formal religion, Simone Dinnerstein is able to give people a mystical experience. In my estimation, she is a theologian in the world of music and a teacher of a certain spiritual discipline in which her method requires a piano.
(Thomas Moore [source])
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