In other news, I've got myself on a big Louis MacNeice kick recently. Not really normal for me, but I'm really enjoying it. I try to keep the non-guitar related stuff to a minimum on the blog, but sometimes it nice to share other things. This book Autumn Journal has a ton of great stuff in it and it's really fitting with my mood lately.
This isn't incredibly interesting, but, regarding his time in Spain, he references the tobacco that Romanillos also mentions in his book about Torres; another testimony that it wasn't entirely Tarrega's carelessness, but the quality of the tobacco that is to blame for all of the cigarette burns on his two guitars.
"...And we sat in trains all night
With the windows shut among civil guards and peasants
And tried to play piquet by a tiny light
And cursed the Spanish rain
And cursed their cigarettes which came to pieces..."
This is just pretty... and somewhat encouraging:
"...I wonder now whether anything is worth
The eyelid opening and the mind recalling.
And I think of Persephone gone down to dark,
No more a virgin, gone the garish meadow,
But why must she come back, why must the snowdrop
mark
That life goes on fore ever?
...Only the spider spinning out his reams
Of colourless thread says Only there are always
Interlopers, dreams,
Who let no dead dog lie nor death be final;
Suggesting, while he spins, that to-morrow will outweigh
To-night, that Becoming is a match for Being,
That to-morrow is also a day,
That I must leave my bed and face the music..."
