How to Stop Time

But then, somehow, it got in.

No. Not got in. That's the wrong way of putting it. Music doesn't get in. Music is already in. Music simply uncovers what is there, makes you feel emotions that you didn't necessarily know you had inside you, and runs around waking them all up. A rebirth of sorts.

There was such a yearning and energy to it. I closed my

And I smiled too, and felt the soul-anchoring joy of being understood.

The longer you live, the more you realise that nothing is fixed. Everyone will become a refugee if they live long enough. Everyone would realise their nationality means little in the long run. Everyone would see their worldviews challenged and disproved. Everyone would realise that the thing that defines a human being is being a human .

…it was good to be back inside the world of feeling.

Reading Schopenhauer when you felt melancholy was like taking off your clothes when you felt cold

And when I felt nothing I almost became nostalgic for the grief; at least when you felt pain you knew you were still alive.

I have long convinced myself that the piano is like a drug, seductive and strong, and it can mess you up, it can awaken dead emotions, it can drown you in your lost selves.

The past stays and echoes even as modernity roars ahead.

‘The past is never gone. It just hides.’