
Thirty kilometers from the capital, I got off the train. When I crossed the stage, I had already assumed that speaking English would be an anomaly, and that all dialogue with the locals would have to be limited to postures and gestures. I started by reviewing simple, well-known words suitable for link building, and chose two of them. I succeeded in pronouncing it, because in return I received smiles and sufficiently precise instructions.
I no longer remember how far I walked or where I walked, guided by raised arms always pointing in the same direction.
The two words made the service station operator make a broad and friendly gesture, and spoke to the owner of a red car to pick me up.
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From the seat of the car, the horizon, painted gray and dotted with melting snow, began to assert itself in breadth and lavishness. It was a a trip Short in silence, just looks. When we arrived, my companion stopped the car and gestured forward with a slight arch of his eyebrows. I went down. I stayed focused for a few seconds on the receding red spot, almost an insult to the monochromatic fish.
I turned and saw the first glimpses of the forest. I tasted its hidden secret and immutable time, the breath of its soil, and the mysterious fragrance of its resins. Then I walked, sinking my boots into the snow.
It didn’t take long to find the house, which blended into the landscape with towering trees and a frozen lake.
I think I was paralyzed, perhaps afraid of not being up to par, of not being able to fill myself with the tapula, with the fresh water of the valley. Sixth Symphony And even the dismal dissonances of a fourth. I fell into silence, repeating to myself the two magic words that had led me there: “Sibelius House“I no longer care that the house is closed for repairs, because I have used up that air. The sky covered with low clouds announces that sunset is approaching, and it is time to return.
Today, forty-four years after that solitary vertigo, the circumstances of returning to the train station have been erased from my memory. Jarvenpaa. But the brushstrokes of that Finnish landscape still resonate when I hear her breath and her heartbeat, vibrant under the snow, in my living room.
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Tapio is the forest spirit in the Finnish national epic KalevalaWho cherishes ancient poetry and folk songs. To this old man, with a coat of moss and a hat made of wild fruits, a beard of lichen and lakes of infinite depth in his eyes, I dedicate Jean Sibelius His symphonic poem Tapiola. The work is designed according to a wonderfully organic logic, starting with an initial four-note idea, which is then transformed and expanded dozens of times over the course of about twenty minutes.
I have always been fascinated by its mysterious static occurrence that seems to conjure a frozen stage, its deliberate harmonic ambiguity, its dynamic leaps, and the dense sound of its split strings. Did these characteristics change after I entered Jarvenpa? Of course not. However, I am clear that something has changed since then, but it has happened on a personal, granular, and subjective level. Each subsequent hearing of the work went beyond the musical, because it placed me on the surface of that frozen lake and in the pine and birch forest, illuminated by the pale evening sun.
My argument also represents a sincere reverence for the composer’s genius. I am sure that many readers will find points of connection with this approach. The following data supports my assumptions:
the Birthing house For example, the Shakespeare Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon attracts several hundred thousand visitors annually. In the same period, Cervantes receives at Alcala de Henares about 150,000. Elvis Presley’s Graceland residence and Frida Kahlo’s Blue House in Mexico City each exceed half a million dollars a year. A similar number of devotees travel to Monet’s home at Giverny, attracted by its magnificent gardens and the lily pond that were the heroine of many of his paintings.
It’s also very busy Freud Museum ViennaThe home of the father of psychoanalysis before Nazi persecution, and the London home he lived in in the last year of his life. One of Victor Hugo in ParisThat’s from Beethoven In Bonn, Marx In Trier, Dickens in London, J.S. Bach in Eisenach, Paul and John in Liverpool, and Einstein In Bern, Mozart In Salzburg, Goethe in Frankfurt and Rome, Manuel de Falla in Alta Gracia just ten minutes from where Che lived during part of his youth, Sabato in Santos Lugares, Gardel in El Abasto, and many more…
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This influx of fans confirms that my Finnish journey was not very innovative. Occupying spaces in which our reference was fleeting creates an emotional and tangible connection with their intimacy, imaginatively connecting us to their joys, doubts, longings, and routines.
An examination of his desk, his music, his glasses, his pen, his boards and brushes, and his piano, evokes the illusion of a lurking presence, as if we could spy on him as he stirred the wood in the fireplace, ate lunch on plates in that cupboard with the carved doors, or, simply and miraculously, surveyed the environment through a window in search of some secret sign that would stimulate his inspiration.
If the visit lasts until five o’clock in the afternoon, and there is a little more imagination, it may happen that our venerable personage will have us share, in a low, whispering voice, how his latest work has been developed.