Writing to 2011

It's been a long time since the last entry. I've been sticking to my journal. Yes, writing for me feels different with a pen making music across blank pages . My journal is called "A woman's journal"--not my intention. I still remembered I anxiously needed one and that volume seemed to contain a year of turbulence the best.

Five days ago I started writing entries again. Well aware of the end of 2010 was coming, I did a little maths. I need to write 5 pages (double-sides) everyday to finish this book of the year. Suddenly that feeling of why-the-deadline-is-here-already surged. Adrenaline released-pupils dilated-muscles contracted-...

Why should I finish the story before the New Year? After I quickly re-installed my superior self-rationalization, I told myself the story officially began on 25th Jan 2010 ! (the day I bought the "A woman's journal")

Perfectly OK to take it easy. However, from that time, my pen seems to be struck by magic and doesn't want to stop once I started an entry. I have been writing from 11.10pm Dec.31st 2010 to 1am Jan.1st 2011--scribbling to the new year with Beethoven's Symphony No.9 on radio.

I think it's going to be a great year, mark my word.

Happy 2011!

Let go

I thought there was nothing wrong yearning for blissful moments.

Like a birthright to steer towards the sun.

But should I have realized how weighted my heart is. In front of it, that simple and beautiful being almost turns into an unbearable lightness. I look over, no, ashore now, and fathom how the leaves might be trembled a little by a soul mired in anguish.

I dare not. I wish not. Let serenity reigns over the pristine mind, only to be overwhelmed by art.

Longing, silent and resigned.

Schopenhauer—Music Before the Dawn (Harper's Magazine)

Schopenhauer—Music Before the Dawn (Harper's Magazine)

If there is only one in the world who knows 'I'

"I'd obey you."

"Now you see why I won't do it. I won't try to stop you. I love you, Dominique."

She closed her eyes, and he said:

"You'd rather not hear it now? But I want you to hear it. We never need to say anything to each other when we're together. This is--for the time when we won't be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want yourself--and so you would not love me long. To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.' The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. If I demanded it, I'd destroy you. That's why I won't stop you. I'll let you go to your husband. I don't know how I'll live through tonight, but I will. I want you whole, as I am, as you'll remain in the battle you've chosen. A battle is never selfless."

--"The Fountainhead", Ayn Rand

Au Bon Pain

Starting to recover from the chamomile tea, my head is more serene now.

It's actually lovely morning. Two old ladies in colourful knitted hats resting their wrinkled, small hands on the coffee table are engaged in an earnest conversation. "Cinema Nostalgia" makes pedestrians' movement into smooth linearity. The golden hair of children are small hopeful voices reminding me to look at the timeline of my own.

Weary eyes will capture their anchor.

Dear Baranowska

What is it like to live on Venus?

When I was child, I thought of you as a fair maiden who passed away at such a young age. I pictured you kneeling on the bench, in a warm and dimly lit church, praying in all innocence and kindness. You must have lived a life free of worries and filled with all pretty things I could dream of. "God gives us music so we can pray without words."

But you hadn't enough, had you? To know the outside world, you longed for the breath of freedom. I ran away from home when I was 15 with my mind set on seeking total independence, economically and emotionally. Although I often found myself pathetically in need of another human being to lean on time to time, deep down I treasure the little universe created by myself, where I can always stop and ponder. Out of provincial "stuff", imagined homesickness! Liberation--was that the same thing you secretly prayed for when you were getting bored with static familiarity?

Endless, endless love for life, or more for the youth! You were once at my age, knowing this spring was never to come again and memories were merely bleak and defective. You were passionate and ready to fly, not believing in the heaven God was soon to bring you to. It's not an enjoyment for salons, but an education to me. I felt the unwavering spine more than the soft and delightful curves.

When mundane insanity corrupts the world, even if it means tears and sweat, for you I want to love my life in perfection.

The Unspeakable

And we said:

"We have given you a name in our thoughts, Liberty 5-3000."

"What is our name?" they asked.

"The Golden One."

"Nor do we call you Equality 7-2521 when we think of you."

"What name have you given us?"

They looked straight into our eyes and they held their head high and they answered:

"The Unconquered."

...

We raised our head and stepped back. For we did not understand what had made us do this, and we were afraid to understand it.

And the Golden One stepped back, and stood looking upon their hands in wonder. Then the Golden One moved away, even though no others were coming, and they moved stepping back, as if they could not turn from us, their arms bent before them, as if they could not lower their hands.

--"Anthem" by Ayn Rand

Total music for a wholesome person...

J.S.Bach seemed to want something very practical when he composed "The Well-Tempered Clavier". He did ingeniously make some key arrangements that were rarely favored by other composers. I have attempted only the C minor BWV 847, the key signature I always found intriguing, especially when comparing to its counterpart--C major (always the voice of masculine justice!). However I feel his C minor Clavier is professing in a stern manner, or maybe it is more like an unyielding stride against the gravity. Our protagonist exposes human weakness physically but never give in to the tension. At last, when the string is suddenly dissolved, Bach must really want us to keep "well-tempered" so the inertia will not destroy the "adagio"...

The "complimentary" Fuge is charming, smoothly dismembering the construction. The substructures seem to reveal, but under close scrutiny we realize they are more intertwined than what we comprehend from the Clavier...

I don't even want to talk about dichotomy, or the illusion of an being or a state. On the stool I subject myself to a hearing influenced by all other senses--fingertips generating spheres with keys, heart beating to the tune...Now what I can only write is the insecurity and fear of knowing how surreal is the little world I have musically inhabited in. Bach just made the confrontation more imminent.

So for once I am going to give myself a jab of anesthetic to ensure I can sanely continue deciphering that cosmic perfection of Bach. I used to care about how my music affect others. Nonsense. Inspiration from my performance? Non-existent. I don't care whether you understand my Bach or Chopin because the "grace" inherently may not be mediated (and I sound like a knight of faith..)

Nothing is more important to me than the consciousness of each of my fingers. As for the audience, saying "i'm lovin'it" is more than enough.

2010 Wishes...

Wish a splendid year ahead

for Id:

Ayn Rand

Hermann Hesse

Jean-Paul Sartre

JP Morgan

Friedrich Nietzsche

Romain Rolland

Virginia Woolf

William Blake

for it:

Beethoven: Appassionata, Mondscheinsonata, Der Sturm

Chopin

Debussy: Clair de lune

Warsaw Concerto

Mozart

To be:

Lake Walden

Met Opera

Carnegie Hall

To...?

a gramophone ^^

the list should be and will be updated...