The silence of the world before BACH

Die Stille der Welt vor Bach

Es muss eine Welt gegeben haben vor
der Triosonate in D, eine Welt vor der a-moll-Partita,
aber was war das für eine Welt?
Ein Europa der großen leeren Räume ohne Widerhall
voll von unwissenden Instrumenten,
wo das Musikalische Opfer und das Wohltemperierte Klavier
noch über keine Klaviatur gegangen sind.
Einsam gelegene Kirchen,
in denen nie die Sopranstimme der Matthäuspassion
sich in hilfloser Liebe um die sanfteren
Bewegungen der Flöte gerankt hat,
wie sanfte Landschaften,
wo nichts zu hören ist als die Äxte alter Holzfäller,
das muntere Bellen starker Hunde im Winter
und Schlittschuhe auf blankem Eis wie ferne Glocken;
die Schwalben, die durch die Sommerluft schwirren,
die Muschel, in die das Kind hineinhorcht,
und nirgends Bach, nirgends Bach.
Die Schlittschuhstille der Welt vor Bach. 

(LARS GUSTAFSSON, dt. V. Reichel)

(get) the OVERLOOK (hotel) ...

 

If you drive for about one hour south east of Portland (Oregon), the road starts rising up to hills. The trees will become bigger and the hills turn into giant grey rocks hiding the blank sky. Then it is time to enter the steep slim side road to the left up to the top of a blinding white cone shimmering in the the strong sunlight of a clear autumn day.   

When you finally arrive over the clouds you will soon understand that you are standing on an old vulcano which is part of a chain called Cascadia. In the south you see Mt Jefferson, to the north there is Mt St Helens (last outbreak May 1980). And you are, somewhere inbetween, on Mt Hood. Welcomed by a raven who was waiting for you for a very long time.

And then you see something that seems very familiar to you although you could have never been here before. It does not look nice or friendly at all, so you start wondering why you feel so much at home on a place that you definitly have never been before. Its a giant wooden house, squatting on the stony side of the vulcano.

Not understanding how something absolutely new can feel so very well known you enter the entrance of this broad wooden building ...

It is a special spirit all around. 

A house haunted by people who never were here.

 

 

A photo of a new years night suddenly tells you why your memory believes you have been here before. You know this place from a movie. From a very special movie.

AND THEN YOU REMEMBER.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

 This is the place of the fictive fiction writer Jack Torrance. You never forgot him.

Welcome to the Overlook hotel.

You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave.

(some arguments) why i don't like facebook

Thanks, Derek Müller!

Heavy little!

                                                                     ...don't miss that!

The horror of beauty

Everybody yearns for beauty, everybody is afraid of horror. Ok, not everybody… Talking about beauty and horror means to talk about emotions and aesthetics. For some reason, our theme is not beauty OR horror, but the two are connected by an AND. Both, beauty and horror, have several layers of meaning: biological, cultural and moral ones. We all remember: The Trojan War was caused by the perfect beauty of Helena. Beauty signifies something blooming in its ideal state. Still, horror is not the opposite of beauty. Like evil descends from something good that is hindered to flourish, horror is a later state of beauty. Horror is prevented, lost or destroyed beauty. „Beauty is nothing but the beginning of horror” - as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote. Horror is beauty in its state of decadence.

I will never forget one of the biggest moments of horror I experienced as a young man. It occurred when watching just a great movie, but it was a sudden and deep understanding of a shocking truth of real life that was symbolised in this movie-scene. Maybe you know the film The Shining made by Stanley Kubrick (a real expert of horror and beauty). In one scene at the closed Overlook Hotel, the lonely writer Jack Torrance enters the empty room 237 because he has heard a noise inside. To his surprise, an unknown beautiful young woman is having a shower in the bathroom. She stares at him without any fear (although she is naked). Jack, the crazy young writer, does not think long, carefully takes her into his arms without a word and tries to kiss her. But when he catches a glance into the big mirror behind them she breaks out in a loud laughter. He sees himself holding an old and ugly virago disfigured by disgusting skin diseases in his arms.

When I saw this scene for the first time I was at least as shocked as the main character of the film (played by Jack Nicholson). It was not the surprising effect of the scene or the sudden change in the lady. I was also not confused by the missing connection of the scene to the main plot of the film. I was shocked because in this second I understood the truth in this symbolic scene: That beauty and horror are no opposites but different states of the same power; that the young beauty and the sick ugly virago are only different aspects of it.

(Watch this scene only if you have strong nerves ...)