Chapter 1April 4, 1964

You gave me two recordings of Wanda Landowska and I have listened to them. In one of them, there's a passage which is a pure marvel.43 Isn't it!

It doesn't last long – it's like crystal.

Yes, exactly! I found it extraordinary.

It's so beautiful! I've never heard anything so pure.

Pure, yes, absolutely pure!

That's a divine means of expression. It's really a divine manifestation on earth....

Yes, very pure – and simple.

I have always wondered why I wasn't born a musician....

You must have been a musician.

It's really a regret in my life not to be a musician. Writing is NEVER "it." But capturing a note like that one...

Oh, mon petit, yesterday or the day before, I heard something... I don't exactly know what it is – it isn't music, I mean it isn't the notation of some musical instrument: it's the notation of a vibration of... I can't say, I didn't understand.44 But in it... At first, you feel exactly as if you had entered a madhouse: it's completely incoherent, disjointed, and everything is unexpected because there is no logic – absolutely nothing mental. So you go from one sound to another, without any transition, and your first impression is exactly like... it's madness. But if you listen, now and then there's a sound, which isn't the sound of a musical instrument... absolutely wonderful! But it lasts one second. You would like it to continue – pfft! gone. And now and then there is a voice, quite like the human voice, you can almost hear words, there seem to be words – which made me think that the sound of our voice has its origin elsewhere (below or above, I don't know; where those vibrations come from I cannot say). And after a while, I saw that something in the being [Mother's being] was... I can't say "interested," it was something that enjoyed it, that didn't exactly have a "pleasant" sensation, but almost felt a need for the unforeseen, an unforeseen beyond all that we can imagine: disjointed, no logic, no sense, nothing. It SOUNDS like 43It is the transcription, by W. Landowska, of a "popular Polish song."