* * * * * * * kdm

Compared to the whizz of the light, the SOUND comes gently along. It is considerably more earthly and closer to us. The auricle has the shape of a funnel and one imagines hearing as if something were poured into us as into a vessel. Music penetrates right into our centre and twitches from there through all our limbs. You can lie down in music like water, drink it like wine, be shaken by it like wind, irradiated by it like light; beat and rhythm drive into your bones and muscles as a moving force, in short: it has body and is in our body. There are people on whom it has the effect of a drug, stimulating to the point of ecstasy, destructive in its after-effects, dissolving and softening; Wagneritis at times certainly had the effect of an alcoholic epidemic, violent wine injected directly into the veins. A very coarse variety is the raucous concert in the beer and coffee house, which drives out all contemplation with its din and numbs the nerves like a thick beer vapour. No art gets into the blood as strongly as music. The physical effect is often stronger than the artistic effect.