Each of Debussy’s notes a delicacy, a dream. Each of Klimt’s flowers, faces a desire to be touched. Spiral after spiral on the maiden’s dress spinning round and down into the deepest part of ourselves. Desire? Fertility? Cosmos? Earth? Debussy begins with a low breathy flute. Pan’s seductive instrument rises and falls, directionless. Angelic harp glissandi dismiss centuries of angels. Whole tones slip and slide like clouds or vague worlds of subtle perfumes, a French horn so liquid you might fall in. Then nine full beats of silence. We are going nowhere. God is dead. Klimt’s maiden dreams a cloud of floating desire. Six other bodies so liquid she might fall in. Faces imbued or seduced by bliss. Purples and yellows, kimonos and mosaics. One shimmer after another. The old hierarchies are replaced by what Debussy hears in Javanese gamelan music: It contains all gradations, even some we no longer know how to name. Or as Debussy says elsewhere: Pleasure is the law.
Performance of Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Check out my latest book, Tennis Players as Works of Art, now available on Amazon. Called “madly ambitious” and named one its 5 featured books of 2024 in the category of Art/Imagination/Creativity by Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, Tennis Players as Works of Art has also been named “One of the Best Books we Read in 2024” (Independent Book Review), “Book of the Year” (Inside Tennis Magazine), and Outstanding Book of the Year for its Original Concept by Independent Publisher’s Book Awards.
Happy to announce that this blog is listed as one of Feedspot’s 90 Best Tennis Blogs and Websites of 2025