I could be almost anyone else

“There is something else that happens during the live performance of an opera. At least, it happens to me. I become slightly unsure of my own full existence. I am all eyes and ears. There are certain moments when I can feel a beautiful loss of sharp and clear personal identity. I could almost be anyone else. This, seemingly, is what happens to other people when they take drugs.

That uncertainty, the giving of yourself over to the music on the stage and the drama and lights, has a complex emotional texture. Sometimes it goes outwards and the way of listening is sharp; it is easy to feel that life itself, during a soaring aria or a moment when a melody lifts, is at its most perfect and pure. Or just that the music is perfect and pure. To hell with life!

The other part is when I lose concentration. Then the power of the music or the singing moves inwards, and I start to let my mind wander. A few times over the years, some way of handling a new novel, or a way of ending a short story, can come here in the dark more precisely and exactly than before, prompted by the music. And then I sit up and feel guilty and go back to listening as carefully as I can.”

Colm Tóibín, Six novelists on their favourite second artform, article in The Guardian Online, Saturday April 27, 2013.

An idea moves into rhythm

“Fiction begins to roll when an idea, a memory, or something imagined or heard or seen, moves into rhythm. Although this happens silently – words on a page are silent – it comes nonetheless with sound. It is the rhythm of prose that hits the reader’s nervous system, and all the more powerfully for being buried in silence, or disguised as silence. Also, although reading is usually done alone, there is something strangely communal about it. It would not do somehow to be the only person in the world who would ever read Madame Bovary or Dubliners or The Portrait of a Lady.

Even though one reader might never meet the others, the fact that those readers are there, and might be there too in the future, seems to matter to the process of reading. I would not like to be alone in reading a book I admire. I do not know why this is the case.”

Colm Tóibín, Six novelists on their favourite second artform, article in The Guardian Online, Saturday April 27, 2013.