David Lang — This Was Written by Hand

La voix de l'émotion, Montserrat Figueras

to live more slowly and music, diary notes

words and thoughts and feelings can be shared,
this does not mean they will be understood in the same way
as they are part of my experience now.

i will mistrust any form of understanding
which would put me in a prison of pre-vision
and define my travel to a one way road.

I will kindly accept any form of understanding
as long as it does not define me as the one
who says, thinks, feels the same tomorrow as now.

each one must have his or her own understanding
which means at best nothing else than to be able to take seed
and grow.

so today's diary note expresses that I am happy and unhappy
and that i have changed and that i will change.

getting older i experience time another way, and it does not make me run
because there may be not so 'much' time left,
this attitude appears immensely futile.
no, it makes 'time' more valuable,
if moments were raindrops i'd enjoy to feel
each one of them touching my skin ever so slowly.

time exists in imagination,
it is a concept which we have learned to use in order to
steer through the coordinates of life and death.
but in fact time is not a line but a space.
and it is up to our growth and imagination and largely to our will how to see this space,
how to  inhabit it and how to feel its presence, our presence and awareness.

i feel now through all this space not as something in front of me as a young man does
but as  inner space which gives me  freedom and way to move inside
and outside, ways to go slowly, to rest inbetween , to see the flowers in lost places,
not only the meadows but each plant in there.

and it is not getting older what makes me melancholic but the presence
of longing and love mixed which permeates my now together with
empathy and mindfulness and egocentricity at the same time.

the suffering of the one i love makes me feel alone although I am not
alone neither  in the sea of dreams nor in my soul.

children are always right, these uncivilized little monsters,
they live now and they want now.
to grow adult has meant to postpone this NOW.
there are not so many happy ways to learn and to do this.

i need a home in myself: it is there.
here.now.

i need to feel at home with my love,
to sleep with the tides and breathe with the stars,
her hand on my chest.
all this is always now.

now i listen to piano music from Franz Liszt,
and i am happy  in solitude
at the same time always quite conscious of all
and all and all in this now,
living slowly,
accepting and enjoying my space.