back to bach

It seems I brought the weather back from Chicago; it is bitterly cold, windy and rainy in New York. Spent the day rushing from puddle to puddle, shoes soaked, jeans soaked and starting to freeze (ahh the feeling of stiff, mud-frozen jeans next to skin), hair - well why go into the hair.

Finally back at home, curled up with green tea and chocolate chip cookies (yes, it has been that kind of a day), listening to Bach in the silence. "Bach thinks in music. Music thinks in Bach. God expresses himself through Bach" said Coetzee.

How can pure sound evoke feeling, memory, sadness and hope? And how can certain human beings be so gifted, so as to create sounds, a series of sounds, rising, falling, loudly, softly, stealthily, surprisingly. A quiet crescendo, in Bach, of the same series of repeating notes can turn such a surprising corner and fall dramatically into an abyss - and the sense of falling is so acute and terrifying and wonderful all at the same time. And 'the shock of recognition' when one does not know what comes next, what corner lies ahead, but when it does, one knows that it was ever meant to be so.

Any world that can produce this is wonderful, even as it maybe simultaneously unexpected, terrible and haunting. Because still, as Nietzsche said, "We have art, so we shall not be destroyed by truth".