The fluidity of life

Of all the different things that I believe we can learn from music, and each and every one of us obviously learns different things, the most clearly definable is the fact that music teaches us as human beings that everything, without an exception, has a past, a present, and a future. Very simple to say, but we all know how difficult it is to live. When we have a pleasant present, we want it to last, we think it will last forever, but in fact the fluidity of life is for me best expressed in music.

Coming out of nothing, the past, the present of the first note, which is nothing but a transition. And what I have learned from music, and have of course not been able to apply to my daily life, is accepting the fluidity of life and the fact that nothing, absolutely nothing, is completely independent and solid, but everything that I think and feel is dependent on this fluidity of life.

Daniel Barenboim, Reith Lectures 2006: In the Beginning was Sound

Start a fire

The mind is not a vessel to be filled,
        but a fire to be kindled.

                Plutarch, On Listening to Lectures

 

 

 

 

 

Sacred words

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect.
If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little
or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.

            Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Created things

A created thing is never invented and it is never true:
         it is always and ever itself.

             Frederico Fellini, I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon 

 

 

 

 

Not bad

Badness is only spoiled goodness.

        C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

 

 

 

 

 

Paying attention

Attention, taken to its highest degree,
is the same thing as prayer.

        Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Beneath Irish Skies