Resonance

There are some pieces of Art, be they music, film, literature or something else that seem to be completely in tune with where you are when you first experience them. Some of these experiences fade through time but others have a peculiar resonance that keeps ringing true after a much longer period. There are a number of pieces i feel that way about at the moment and i hope that i'll continue to find more, but for now I'd just like to post about one. It's a book called "Hopscotch" written by an Argentinian called Julio Cortazar and now billed (although it was written in the sixties) as the first hypertext novel due to the fact that it has a number of "expendable chapters" and can be read in a variety of ways. I still remember being utterly hooked by the first few lines, and no matter how many times i go back to it i always seem to find new things that speak to where i am at the time. I'm going to type out the first main paragraph just to remind myself and for anyone else that cares to read it.

YES, but who will cure us of the dull fire, the colourless fire that at nightfall runs along the Rue de la Huchette, emerging from the crumbling doorways, from the little entranceways, of the imageless fire that licks the stones and lies in wait in doorways, how shall we cleanse ourselves of the sweet burning that comes after allied with time and memory, with sticky things that hold us here on this side, and which will burn sweetly in us until we have been left in ashes. How much better, then, to make a pact with cats and mosses, strike up friendship right away with hoarse-voiced concierges, with the pale and suffering creatures who wait in windows and toy with a dry branch. To burn like this without surcease to bear the inner burning coming on like fruits quick ripening, to be the pulse of a bonfire in the thicket of endless stone, walking through the nights of our life, obedient as our blood in its blind circuit.

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