The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

I am magical: I can bleed for five days and not die.

Like punk rock, like Jackson Pollock, like Jack Kerouac, it was truly human, a mix of perfect beauty and cathartic error.

The most beautiful rooms I have entered have been empty ones. Warehouses full of light and dust. Empty attics with a view. Coastlines. Prairies.

Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilerated speechlessness.

I am careful never to talk about religion. Who am I to kick at people's crutches?

I'm more preoccupied with furnishing my head than the place where I live. The most beautiful rooms I have entered have been empty ones.

How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?

My developing sense was that the foundation of a story is an emotional foundation. If a story does not work emotionally, it does not work at all.

What a strange, wondrous thing, music. At last the chattering mind is silenced. No past to regret, to future to worry about, no more frantic knitting of words and thoughts. Only a beautiful, soaring nonsense.

L'ottimismo durevole può essere il prodotto di una cosa sola: ragione. Ogni ottimismo irragionevole tende a essere sconfitto dalla realtà e persino a sfociare in un'infelicità maggiore. L'ottimismo deve dunque essere fondato nella ragione, in essa incrollabilmente radicato, così che il pessimismo diventi un atteggiamento sciocco, miope. Essendo la ragionevolezza quella cosa ingloriosa e tiepida che è, ciò significa che che l'ottimismo può sorgere soltanto da piccoli, quasi ridicoli, e tuttavia innegabili traguardi.