№ 367. Synesthesia

Today, Grimaud considers some of her early playing too slow and too attentive to detail at the expense of “the big arc,” but at the time she felt febrile with ideas that she had to share. Though she believes that Romantic composers like Brahms and Chopin hold special wisdom, she is not wedded to that style. “If you talk to me, you can call a lot of things Romantic,” she says. “You can call Bach’s Sixth Partita as Romantic as any Wagner opera. Romanticism is, for me, much more than a period in culture.”

№ 366. I Told You So

If I Could Tell You
WH Auden


Time will say nothing but I told you so
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

№ 365. Travels and Travails

To sit outside a Paris cafe at breakfast is to observe the city as it wipes the sleep from its eyes: the soft clink of a cup and saucer, the turning of newspaper pages, the passer-by with a cigarette who asks for a light — and me, at my little round table, nibbling a speculoos, sipping my café crème.