(via Reham)

“Une musique que j’aime est comme la rencontre avec une vie extraterrestre intelligente. Un miracle. “Cette basse est le son du destin, un grognement de la terre, l’approche d’une tempête. Cette guitare est une rivière. Elle est lumineuse, elle est extravertie, elle n’a peur de rien. Cette batterie danse comme un petit soldat coloré. Cette chanson est comme un départ à l’aube, un départ triste, mais les montagnes sont belles. L’air est frais. Ce silence est le silence d’une grande pièce en pierre, vide, avec des rayons de soleil plein de poussière. Cette voix a l’humour d’un bon père qui aime ses enfants. Cette chanteuse a la rage d’une femme qui aime la vie et n’accepte pas qu’elle devienne grise.” De la compassion ! Enfin, de la compassion ! Tu aurais pu détruire, mais tu as crée. Tu aurais pu tuer, mais tu as donné. Tu aurais pu t’écrouler, mais tu t’es levé. Tu aurais pu t’éteindre, mais tu t’es allumé. Tu as fait grandir le cœur de ce monde. Tu as repoussé les murs. Merci.” 

– Lhasa,  La Route Chante

“Like every child I built emotional bridges in the imagination to link me to the world and to other people. I lived in a town on the outskirts of Mexico City, in an old dilapidated house that had a jungle-like garden and a great room full of books. First games and first lessons. The garden soon became the centre of my world; the library, an enchanted cave. I used to read and play with my cousins and schoolmates. There was a fig tree, temple of vegetation, four pine trees, three ash trees, a nightshade, a pomegranate tree, wild grass and prickly plants that produced purple grazes. Adobe walls. Time was elastic; space was a spinning wheel. All time, past or future, real or imaginary, was pure presence. Space transformed itself ceaselessly. The beyond was here, all was here: a valley, a mountain, a distant country, the neighbours’ patio. Books with pictures, especially history books, eagerly leafed through, supplied images of deserts and jungles, palaces and hovels, warriors and princesses, beggars and kings. We were shipwrecked with Sinbad and with Robinson, we fought with d’Artagnan, we took Valencia with the Cid. How I would have liked to stay forever on the Isle of Calypso! In summer the green branches of the fig tree would sway like the sails of a caravel or a pirate ship. High up on the mast, swept by the wind, I could make out islands and continents, lands that vanished as soon as they became tangible. The world was limitless yet it was always within reach; time was a pliable substance that weaved an unbroken present.”

– Octavio Paz, Nobel Prize Lecture (1990)

 If You Want Blood (live) – Mark Kozelek  

III-

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

 – T.S Eliot, from East Coker (Four Quartets)

“In the lapse of time between two claps of one’s delicate hands, one can commit the worst crime, can confess all the sins, complete a masterpiece.  One can see one’s whole life flash right before one’s eyes, can wake up in a dream, feel like a year has passed, see atoms split in half, can give up everything, can hurt one’s dear love while deciding to turn left instead of turning right, can try with all one’s might to make the world stand still, but the smallest decision will cause a chain reaction turning one’s life around and others’ in between.  And if the said decision is also the reaction to something that’s been done a thousand years before, well is the whole equation calculated and written?  Or are there a bunch of numbers thrown together at random?  And if so then why is it so goddamn hard to believe for one second that there will be accidents?  There will be accidents.  A lot of things can happen – a lot of things – in the lapse of time between two claps of your delicate hands.”

Florian Lunaire