Musings: An Aesthetic Experience with Andrea Bocelli

So, I'm reading loads of Henry James right now, taught by an intellectual whose capacity for making connections and tying things together is supernal. I've been thinking about "aesthetic experiences" which art can elicit, and earlier I had an aesthetic experience--being moved by "Time to Say Goodbye," sung by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. I'm not sure what I understood, but I was moved, almost to the point of tears, because something bigger and grander was behind me.

Listening to Bocelli and Brightman, and also being reminded of coming across Pavoretti's "Nessun Dorma" a few months ago, and I had the feeling that these songs, what they are trying to say, is reality. I don't know what they're saying (literally; I don't understand Italian!), but whatever it is, it's true and real. Just as much as the things we see, feel, deal with daily.

Maybe that "something bigger and grander" is life, real life.

Updates, On Breathing, and Dissatisfaction

What is that song they sang on Glee, No Air? Gasp, that might actually express how I'm feeling. 

It’s time to come up for a breath and recap what I've been doing (and please Bonanerz in the process). After leaving New York City in mid-August, I went Home for a grand total of four days and then was off and away back to College. And jolines, was it back to College. I wasn’t even doing schoolwork for the first two weeks, only doing training and then helping out at Orientation. Everything since… June… has been filled, busy, a whirlwind.

Now, I am immersed in the depths of schoolwork yet again. Indeed, with this wonderful, dreadful thing called thesis looming over my head, I always have something large, something bigger than myself to work on.

I see this photo and think "Little Secrets"

Immersed is the correct word to use in this case. I have been wading through possible primary sources, and taken a look at the vast ocean of information which exists about my subject. It’s thrilling, I get to engage in this conversation, perhaps even suggest something new. I get to direct my own studies. The feelings I have now are akin to those I had back in Scotland, where I was responsible for the direction and depth of my own education.

Now, the trouble will be balancing out those directions and policing myself.

In one sense, I’m incredibly satisfied with the larger project of thesis I have going on—I wish I could spend all my days researching for my topic, interspersed here and there with Henry James and occasionally Augustus and even Homer, to break it up every now and then. I wish I could shut myself in a room lined from floor-to-ceiling with books and a big table. And that my living space was separate from that space, and that I could shut myself up in there without feeling like I’m missing the world that’s bound to pass me by.

Though in other senses, too, I’m feeling unfulfilled. I wish life were more like Edinburgh, where I felt more of a separation between work/school and home-life. Maybe life as a graduate student is calling me? Probably not.

I’m also getting a feeling that I need to leave, to run away. This has happened before, possibly even been mentioned on this blog, but the enchantment distant lands hold is calling me. Somehow, the life I am living seems disenchanting. I am the same lackluster person--not that running far away will fix it.

"Finally Moving" outside of the LACMA.

Some nights, when you want to have a dance party by yourself in your room, you put in your ear buds, only to realize that the music on your iPod does not reflect your tastes, who you've become, except maybe the Coldplay (Viva La Vida was a good album) and the U2 you own (because it’s U2). I suppose I feel simultaneously too young and too old... for whatever it is that I'm trying to do.

Maybe I need a different place to grow for a while (New York, Chicago, Seattle, Boston)? Or perhaps just different music (Passion Pit, Baths, MGMT). This time, on my iPod.