The Noise of Time

Destiny. It was just a grand term for something you could do nothing about. When life said to you, ‘And so,’ you nodded, and called it destiny.

He was not a believer. But he had been baptised, and sometimes, when he passed an open church, he would light a candle for his family. And he knew his Bible well. So he was familiar with the notion of sin; also with its public mechanism.

idyll, by definition, only becomes an idyll once it has ended

He was no longer afraid of being killed – that was true, and should have been an advantage. He knew he would be allowed to live, and receive the best medical attention. But, in a way, that was worse. Because it is always possible to bring the living to a lower point. You cannot say that of the dead.

And of course, the intransigent logic ran in the opposite direction as well. If you saved yourself, you might also save those around you, those you loved. And since you would do anything in the world to save those you loved, you did anything in the world to save yourself. And because there was no choice, equally there was no possibility of avoiding moral corruption.

He wrote music for everyone and no one. He wrote music for those who best appreciated the music he wrote, regardless of social origin. He wrote music for the ears that could hear. And he knew, therefore, that all true definitions of art are circular, and all untrue definitions of art ascribe to it a specific function.

Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.

Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it.

Could irony protect his music? In so far as music remained a secret language which allowed you to smuggle things past the wrong ears. But it could not exist only as a code: sometimes you ached to say things straightforwardly.

The natural progression of human life is from optimism to pessimism; and a sense of irony helps temper pessimism, helps produce balance, harmony.