Aural happiness

Mr Grey had a brain wave and refurbished a pair of extremely awesome sennheiser headphones for me and i've been glued to them ever since. I was so dubious about using gigantic headphones at first ... and then he dragged me to this geeky audio-phile type shop in the Adelphi (where else?) and made me sit down and audition a bunch of awesome headphones.

So now I have extremely awesome earphones that make me feel as though i'm standing in between the double bass and piano when listening to Norah Jones and Krall. You have no idea how happy this makes me; most nights when i get home, i have no energy for anything more than lying around and listening to music.

this started in medias res - the background to this is that I was once a $10-earphones-from-mustaffa-are-good-enough type of girl.

Hideously large and expensive earphones were... *ahem* unheard of in my world.

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Related but not quite.

Lately I've been listening to Mozart's Piano Sonata in E flat (with the aforementioned awesome head phones)and loving how shaded and mellow it is. Somehow I associate that kind of mellow lyricism with Schubert more than Mozart; Mozart is usually so cheery and skippy.

But this has been a Mozart year - ups and downs but with this general underlying thread of happiness - and I am so grateful.

Earlier in the year, I used to lie in my room listening sleepily while Mr Grey played Mozart's Piano Sonata in B Flat in the living hall.

Somehow, hearing mozart and chopin in the house again has helped connect up all the left over unhappy bits ... and I feel as though music has finally - and truly - re-entered my home again.

I make my living with words but at these times and with these things ... there are no words. I can only listen to the music over and over again, knowing that the notes express exactly and precisely how it is ...

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the only bit I really liked of Murakami's Norwegian Wood was where he talked about how the beatles song plugged the protagonist directly into the past.

I am unable to be objective about music in the same way. When it connects directly into a memory or feeling from the past, I can't tell you if it is good or bad music - only that it dredges up a whole well of meaning and history....

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