Richter

I often listen to Max Richter while I write. In his music illustrating Virginia Wolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Richter captures the atmosphere with such majesty. The unyielding rhythm, the drama but also the compassion, the admiration and, above all, the flow.

With Richter you never know whether you are dragged or suspended, but you do know you have no will power. You cannot cling to a rock or a tree, you are moved. Best to relax and go with it. Rather than dwelling in a particular emotion, it goes with the flow, it explores it repeatedly until it accepts it.

A guttural cello voice starts speaking, disclosing, lamenting, you can almost listen to the wood screaming softly. Almost a mute scream at first, a pain contained inside for years starts unfolding expressing itself. There is such strength, such inexorable determination, as if there was only this moment, as if tomorrow weren’t even a possibility, as if all the weight from yesterday was crawling out of her stomach and finally screaming, uncontained. And the undercurrent always rocking her, almost caressing her, encouraging.

You can almost see the heroism of her suffering. An understanding without yielding to pain or time. Lifted to heavens while chained to the ground, dragged. The lament continues, but the supporting music somehow says “We know. We understand.” A liberation.

Drama and beauty are one, wrapping around each other with inexorable magnificence. The music unravels, coils, unfolds, begins again. The sun rises but there is no tomorrow, everything is an immense now.

The pain, the inevitability. The pain. A cry, a wail dragged along the ground and at the same time lifted lovingly on a cloud. At once merciless and compassionate. It is an ending, inevitable and epic. A river that reaches the sea, with all the splendour of its scars. Magnificent and yet ephemeral. The world is a woman.

And always that underground current of admiration, a praise to the hero. You can even hear the cannons below, a fanfare to life. The entire world smiles and salutes the hero with hats in their hands, in silence, overwhelmed by the thunderous sound as it passes. Life. She needed to say it. She needed to be heard. There is a splendorous triumph in the expression of this pain, an overcoming.

The music stops abruptly. There was nothing else to add. Now there is only silence. The eternal silence in which this music existed, briefly.

And just as it came, it leaves… I land here again.

This was all a projection of course. Music is received individually and transformed into an experience depending on the substrate we are at the time of listening. We interact with music. Music produces a reaction in us. One could think that music (recorded music) is always the same, unchangeable, but is it? Does it not change because I changed? At least it changes for me. I am different and the couple that the music and I form are different too.

Sometimes it feels as if Rothko was painting a fresco on the mural of my mind from the inside. One can only look, in awe.

Here’s a link to the video, in case it doesn’t work.