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pafib #4

00:00 Fri 09 Aug 2002. Updated: 18:36 16 Feb 2009
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possible attitudes found in books 1) I don't know what's happening to me 2) what does it mean? 3) seized with the deepest sadness, I know not why 4) I am lost, my head whirls, I know not where I am 5) I lose myself 6) I ask you, what have I come to? 7) I no longer know where I am, what is this country? 8) had I fallen from the skies, I could not be more giddy 9) a mixture of pleasure and confusion, that is my state 10) where am I, and when will this end? 11) what shall I do? I do not know where I am

—from 'Alice', in Sixty Stories, Donald Barthelme, Penguin, New York 1993

This is the fourth in a series of eleven.

I am lost, my head whirls, I know not where I am. The music crashes all around me. Notes are coming and going, eluding my grasp and my sight as I try to catch or follow them. Even this I only try sporadically, when I can wrest my mind from the glory of it all. A labyrinth of beautiful sound.

There must be a way out. But oh that beautiful melody! But ah that sublime harmony! The divinity of genius! The, the, the ways words fail, words cannot describe the music, the music is not for words or describing, and that is the key, to concentrate on the words, the inadequacy of the words reminds me that I am trapped.

I know that I must get out. Music cannot sustain the body. My body does not appear to be suffering, but I do not know how long I have been here. Can I measure time in sonatas and symphonies? No. They all blend in to each other, and some period passes before I realize that there has been any transition.

Can music sustain the soul? I do not know. Perhaps the soul needs words. Words. I will translate the music into words, even if this is impossible. The attempt itself will ground me, bring me closer to some exit, the futility-ee of struu-uugle dum de da da dum trails trails trails trills la laaaa didididi dum la da

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