The Food of Love and Happiness
You can't reflect on the sources of Happiness too long before you get to Music. I'll always remember a quotation I heard at school by Walter Pater (whoever he was, a pal of Oscar Wilde if I remember right - and while we're on the subject of Oscar it's a good time to chuck The Importance of Being Earnest and The Ballad of Reading Gaol into the Simple Pleasures pot, and while on the subject of those let's toss in woodcuts, as my copy of Reading Gaol is illustrated with woodcuts by Frans Masereel, and the films of Albert Lewin including The Picture of Dorian Gray and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman which brings us neatly to James Mason's voice and Ava Gardner's beauty ...and the beauty of Women and the voice of her ex-hubby Frank Sinarta and ...well we're back to music - but look how infectious this Pleasure thing is, and now back to Walter, reigning in this sentence in a way John Milton would be proud of - oh yes, Sing heavenly muse, let's not forget Paradise Lost, in particular that red Cambridge edition we had at school in Mr Fitch's class, which had a major impact on me because it first made me aware of the narrowness and artificiality of school subjects and the connections between things [very internety really]) ah yes dear old Walter who said: "All Art aspires to the condition of music" which I read as meaning that every other art form would love to achieve the directness of Music's impact on the heart, I mean look at this jumble of words... It could all be said in a phrase of music from say Miles Davis' transcendent Flamenco Sketches.
