Massive Attack - Paradise Circus and my newest music obsession

My new guilty pleasure

On Beauty
Thoughts about beauty assaulted me this weekend and I realized I can be fooled into thinking it is a physical concept...

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. - Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all ye know on earth and all ye need know. - John Keats


In the movie Don Juan DeMarco, Marlon Brando is asking Johnny Depp how he attracts so many women. Depp, playing the role of Don Juan, replies (in Castillan accent):
By seeing beyond what is visible to the eye. Now there are those, of course, who do not share my perceptions, it is true. When I say that all my woman are dazzling beauties, they object. The nose of this one is too large; the hips of another, they are too wide; perhaps the breasts of a third, they are too small. But I see these women for how they truly are... glorious, radiant, spectacular, and perfect... because I am not limited by my eyesight. Women react to me in the way they do, Don Octavio, because they sense that I search out the beauty that lies within until it overwhelms everything else. And then they cannot avoid their desire, to release that beauty and envelope me in it.
How beautiful you are, my beloved, how beautiful! - Song of Songs 1:15

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

Mahatma Gandhi

I realize, I am quite insane, but it's all for love.

Beautiful

To Silvia by Giacomo Leopardi

Silvia, do you rememberthe moments, in your mortal life,when beauty still shonein your sidelong, laughing eyes,and you, light and thoughtful,went beyond girlhood’s limits?

The quiet rooms and the streetsaround you, soundedto your endless singing,when you sat, happily content,intent, on that woman’s work,the vague future, arriving alive in your mind.It was the scented May, and that’s howyou spent your day.

I would leave my intoxicating studies,and the turned-down pages,where my young life,the best of me, was left,and from the balcony of my father’s housestrain to catch the sound of your voice,and your hand, quick,running over the loom.I would look at the serene sky,the gold lit gardens and paths,that side the mountains, this side the far-off sea.And human tongue cannot saywhat I felt then.

What sweet thoughts,what hopes, what hearts, O Silvia mia!How it appeared to us then,all human life and fate!When I recall that hopesuch feelings pain me,harsh, disconsolate,I brood on my own destiny.Oh Nature, Naturewhy do you not give nowwhat you promised then? Whydo you so deceive your children?

Attacked, and conquered, by secret disease,you died, my tenderest one, and did not seeyour years flower, or feel your heart moved,by sweet praise of your black hairyour shy, loving looks. No friends talked with you, on holidays, about love.

My sweet hopes died alsolittle by little: to me tooFate has denied those years. Oh,how you have passed me by,dear friend of my new life,my saddened hope!Is this the world, the dreams, the loves, events, delights, we spoke about so much together?Is this our human life?At the advance of Truthyou fell, unhappy one,and from the distance,with your hand, you pointedtowards death’s coldness and the silent grave.