One of the things I’ve noticed about this board is how dopers react to each other’s posts when we have something in common/are reminded of something. It’s fun to watch it happen every day.
With that said, in a world of war, hunger, pain and isolation…how about taking the time to remember some of the beautiful things–and most importantly–share them with each other.
So this is what I want:
Tell us about the beautiful music/poetry/movie lines or scenes–the ones that make you think, “I forgot how beautiful that is…”
I’ll start with one.
Kate Bush’s voice in the song “The Warm Room,” singing the descending line “She’ll tell you she’s true…”
It’s so pure…beautiful.
THIS music more than any other utterly tears me apart. I don’t know why it hasn’t been “discovered” (exploited!) like the Adagietto of the fifth symphony. Words fail in conjuring something like the experience, the movement is an exercise in solitude, heartbreak, loss, and, as always with Mahler, the sheer love of life, the almost frantic ecstasy piercing through blindingly.
The symphony in it’s entirety is a shattering experience, to say the least, it’s taken on a kind of ominous dark presence in my mind; it’s an experience I subject myself to, though musically I enjoy it of course, I have to have decided to wrestle with my demons.
Well…this is a total hijack but it’s keeping in spirit with the topic.
Yesterday I watched a complete sunset. I hadn’t watched one in years and this is the first one I just sat and watched down here.
The sky started out as a light pink then slowly to a beautiful dark red. It slowly got quieter and quieter as the light faded and people went to bed. Then slowly the red turned to purple and the clouds slowly faded from site. The stars started showing up one by one as the world faded to black.
Once, at a retreat in the middle of nowhere, up in the mountains, I saw a huge double rainbow arching across the sky. We stood there and stared until it disappeared.
The most symbolic part being that it was a retreat for GLBT youth.
Eva Cassidy. I think she had one of the most beautiful voices ever. Whenever I hear her sing “How Can I Keep From Singing” I leave this world, if only for the duration of the song.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Keats
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
One of the brightest rainbows, if not the brightest, was a double rainbow hanging in the eastern sky, just as I came out of the movie theater, having just seen “The Passion of the Christ” Many moviegoers leaving just stopped and stared for a bit. It was glorious to begin with, but especially so after the dark horror of what had been in the film.