HAWK A MOTH
October 25th, 2007“Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds. Under certain emotional circumstances I can stand the spasms of of a rich violin, but the concert piano and all wind instruments bore me in small doses and flay me in larger ones. Despite the number of operas I was exposed to every winter ( I must have attended Ruslan and Pikovaya Dama at least a dozen times in the course of half as many years), my weak responsiveness to music was completely overrun by the visual torment of not being able to read over Pimen’s shoulder or of trying in vain to imagine the hawkmoths in the dim bloom of Juliet’s garden.”
- Nabokov from Speak, Memory
Lawrence was on WNYU reading some of his work
- Nabokov from Speak, Memory
I love this. But Nabokov might mean it ironically, I have no idea. I will ask my professor and let you know. There is some music I enjoy, like the
Giant Skyflower Band and the 1966 Stevie Wonder record Up-Tight Everythings Alright and the Baby Boy Da Prince song The Way I Live. I thought about doing some sort of exploration of how music affects me emotionally, and blogging about it, but I can’t even get excited about learning why I’m not excited about listening to music. My friend Marie once suggested that she had amusia and I wondered if I did, too.Lawrence was on WNYU reading some of his work