Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent
Ch. Baudelaire
echoing anfilades of my soul, "the images that yet fresh images beget", history, history of art, languages, raqs sharqi, Syriac, Levant, Greece, saints, icons and iconography, Christianity, Byzantium, Isadora Duncan's dancing technique,
joie de vivre, dolce farniente, Novalis and Jena Romantics, Vienna, Turner, Venice - "inspiration of all our consolations" ,
Baron de Meyer's photographs,
Marchesa Casati,
"World of Art" and Diaghilev's Saisons Russes,
Rene Lalique
poetry, opera, France, ars nouveau, symbolism,
ballet, Nijinsky,
strolling around, Jazz Age,
flappers,
creativity and TRAVEL!
Friends, kindred spirits, interesting people I can talk with about art, literature, philosophy, music, theatre etc...
Psyche
The Butterfly the ancient Grecian's made
The soul's fair emblem and its only name
But of the soul escaped the slavish trade
of mortal life ! for in this earthly frame
Ours is the reptile lot, much toil much pain
Manifold motion making little speed
And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed .
S.T.Coleridge
Nina Simone, Billie Holliday, Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Mistinguette, Chet Baker, Antonio Bononcini, Arturo Bernedetti Michelangeli, Fritz Kreisler, Haendel's operas, Henry Purcell,Mozart, Rita Streich, Elisabethan Music, Alfred Deller,Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Piazzola, Carlos Gardel, Cecilia Bartoli, Radu Marian, Allegri's Miserere, Guilbert& Sullivan, Anouar Brahem, Natacha Atlas, Russian Spiritual Chants, Chopin, Amy Winehouse, Emilie Simon, Mika, Dresden Dolls etc.
Howl's Moving Castle, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Le Maitre de Musique,les Enfants du Paradis, Gigi, Viktor and Viktoria, Muenhhausen, L'Orphee, Jeeves and Wooster, The Devil Wears Prada, My Fair Lady, Valentino, Ninotscka, Grand Hotel, Il Gattopardo, Derek Jarman's Caravaggio, Orlando, Comedian Harmonists, Somewhere in Time, The House of Mirth, Metropolis, the Monty Python films, A Man with a Movie Camera, The Lady Vanishes, Faust by F. Murnau, Mae West films, early b/w cinema
Life's too short to waste it!
Zuleika Dobson + other Beerbohm's works, Shaw and Wilde, of course, PG Wodehouse in general and Jeeves and Wooster in particular, The Book of the Courtier by Baldessare Castiglione, The Letters of Lord Chesterfield, George Etheridge'comedies, R.M.Rilke, W.B.Yeates, Dante's Vita Nuova, Goethe, Pasternak, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Lev Karsavin and lots of others.
Your absence makes us melancholy... Otherwise -- Winston Churchill, Duke Wellington, Egeria, Heloise, Greta Garbo, Stephen Fry, Madame Recamier, Des Essaintes.