books and movies books and movies some music too

This week, I am sponge.

Squelched from the pages of Kafka on the Shore:

"Still, there's something in this photo of the nineteen-year-old that the middle-aged woman I know has lost forever. You might call it an outpouring of energy. Nothing showy, it's colorless, transparent, like fresh water secretly seeping out between rocks--a kind of natural, unspoiled appeal that shoots straight to your heart. That brilliant energy seeps out of her entire being as she sits there at the piano. Just by looking at that happy smile, you can trace the beautiful path that a contented heart must follow. Like a firefly's glow that persists long after it's disappeared into the darkness."
I want to draw this scene. I want to live it.

"'Tell me something,' Hoshino began. 
'What?''
Are you really Colonel Sanders?'
Colonel Sanders cleared his throat. 'Not really. I'm just taking on his appearance for a time.'
'That's what I figured,' Hoshino said. 'So what are you really?'
'I don't have a name.'
'How do you get along without one?'
'No problem. Originally I don't have a name or shape.'
'So you're kind of like a fart.'"
That is powerful writing (or translation).

Sopped up from last night's screening of Frühlingssinfonie:

"The Spring Symphony" roused in me indomitable desire. Desire for musical companionship, for communication, for insoluble bonds. The love story of Robert and Clara Schumann confirms the impermanence of human passion, but affirms that our art--the words, sounds, and images that outlive their smithers--may cheat change. 

In one scene, they swim in seas of white sheets and nightgowns to the swelling of his piano concerto, clinging to each other with a fury usually reserved for their respective roles as composer and performer; in the next moment, they are married strangers, regretful yet resolute. An abrupt ending: Robert dies young of syphilis, but Clara spends the next forty years performing and promulgating his works. Music tied them together in life and death; it was a strand that the Fates could not sever.

And a comment on music-marketing:

What does it take to make classical music appeal to contemporary audiences? Perhaps some proper exploiting, as this flyer does Symphonie Fantastique. Berlioz's audiences knew the stories behind his sounds; if our generation did as well, there would be hope for the genre.

sounds good to me