After-Orts #45
A hidden haiku from the penultimate paragraph of a NYT article about swimming with a manta ray in Hawaii:
I tried to race it
And lost, giddy and full of
Awe at the sighting.
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The piece was recognisable to Dixon as some skein of untiring facetiousness by filthy Mozart.
-- Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim, chapter 6
(thanks, DK)
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Never before has a piece of music pierced me as deeply as this one did now. Though even to call it "music" is to diminish what now began to flow, which was nothing less than the stream of human consciousness, something in which one might glean the very meaning of life and, if you could bear it, read life's last chapter. . . . Bach's cello suite...had the unmistakable effect of reconciling me to death . . . . Losing myself in this music was a kind of practice for that-- for losing myself, period. Having let go of the rope of self and slipped into the warm waters of this worldly beauty...I felt as though I'd passed beyond the reach of suffering and regret.
-- Michel Pollan, hearing Yo-Yo Ma's recording of the second of Bach's unaccompanied cello suites while under the influence of psilocybin ("magic mushrooms"); in How to Change Your Mind, chapter 4
https://youtu.be/Wa5yony2CeA