#White Noise of Beethoven

[usabun-tl]

Beethoven's White Noise・ベートーヴェンのホワイトノイズ — PELICAN FANCLUB

English+Romaji Translation

結局人間が好きだった

kekkyoku ningen ga suki datta

In the end, I liked humans

なぜなら僕は人間だ

naza nara boku wa ningen da

After all, I'm human too

当たり前の手前の理由を探した

atari mae no temae no riyuu wo sagashita

I searched for that obvious answer that was right in front of me

結局人間がわからない

kekkyoku ningen ga wakaranai

In the end, I don't understand humans

次の日はもう別人だ

tsugi no hi wa mou betsujin da

By tomorrow you'll be a stranger

当たり前に名前を変えていつも

atari mae ni namae wo kaete itsumo

So of course you're always changing your name

振り回されてふりだしに来て

furi mawasarete furidashi kite

I came back to the start swinging

振り回していた

furi mawashiteita

I was swinging

心なしはどうかしている

kokoro nashi wa douka shiteiru

Without a heart, I've lost my mind

どの言葉もどうかしている

dono kotoba mo douka shiteiru

And those words make me crazy too

たった一つ信じたのは

tatta hitotsu shinjita no wa

The one thing I believed in

ベートーヴェンの「運命」だった

beetoovun no unmei datta

Was Beethoven's "Fate"

心なしかどうかしていた

kokoro nashi ka douka shiteita

I had lost my heart, lost my mind

堂々巡り　どうかしていた

doudou meguri doukashiteita

Going around in circles, out of my mind

たった一つ忘れていた

tatta hitotsu wasureteita

The one thing I had forgotten

ベートーヴェンも人間だった

beeroovun mo ningen datta

Was that Beethoven was human too

結局人間ってなんだっけ？

kekkyoku ningen tte nandakke

In the end, what makes a human?

心かそれか感情か？

kokoro ka sore ka kanjou ka

Could it be a heart, or emotions?

頭を経由しているかどうか？

atama wo keiyuu shiteiru ka douka

Could it be through the mind?

今更　引き戻されて

imasara hiki modosarete

By now I've been brought back

引き返せなくなった

hiki kaesenakunatta

And returning has become impossible

心なしはどうかしている

kokoro nashi wa douka shiteiru

Without a heart, I've lost my mind

どの言葉も泥の中

dono kotoba mo doro no naka

And those words are stuck inside of mud

たった一つ照らしていた

tatta hitotsu terashiteita

The one thing illuminated

ベートーヴェンの「月光」だった

beetoovun no gekkou datta

Was Beethoven's "Moonlight"

心なしかどうかしていた

kokoro nashi ka douka shiteita

I had lost my heart, lost my mind

堂々としてどうかしていた

doudou toshite douka shiteita

Magnificently out of my mind

たった一つ忘れたんだ

tatta hitotsu wasuretanda

The one thing I had forgotten

ベートーヴェンも人間だっけ？

beetoovun mo ningen dakke

Wasn't Beethoven human too?

僕らが見てきた生活は作品の中

bokura ga mitekita seikatsu wa sakuhin no naka

This way of life we've come to see is inside of these songs

いつか終わりが来ることに気づけない

itsuka owari ga kuru koto ni kizuikenai

We won't be able to tell when the end is coming

惑わされているよう

madowasareteiru you

As if we've been led astray

ホワイトノイズ

howaito noizu

White noise

心なしはどうかしている

kokoro nashi wa douka shiteiru

Without a heart, I've lost my mind

どの言葉もどうでもよくて

dono kotoba mo dou demo yokute

And I'm not going to worry about those words

たった一つ　決まっていたのは

tatta hitotsu kimatteita no wa

The one thing I've settled

彷徨うだけの運命だった

samayou dake no unmei datta

Is that my fate was to simply wander around this life

心なしかどうかしていた

kokoro nashi ka douka shiteita

I had lost my heart, lost my mind

堂々としてどうかしていよう

doudou toshite douka shitei you

Magnificently out of my mind

たった一つ大事にしたい

tatta hitotsu daiji ni shitai

The one thing I want to cherish

僕も君も人間だった

boku mo kimi mo ningen datta

Is that you and I were human

[glow-worms-are-believers]

Alley Chat (Dp x dc)

Danny leaned on the dirty alleyway walls, his head down, as he tried to stave off tears. Taking one more shaky breath, he did his best to let it out slowly.

“You’re fine,” he gasped. 

Then, one more gulp, “You’re safe.”

And then, “Breathe.”

“C’mon just-“ he heaved in a breath, “breathe goddammit.” 

Then he tilted his head backwards as his eyes slid shut. He inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth, his heart-rate finally slowing down.

He brushed away the wet of his cheeks with the rag he’d shoved in his barista apron earlier. Figuring it was already ruined as it was he blowed his nose in it as well. Now if he could just splash his face with cold water, he’d be almost as new.

He reached for the stick of gum he knew he’d left in the bigger pocket only to freeze as he felt something smoother under his fingers. The card from earlier.

“This is for you,” his father had said, looking more unsure of himself than Danny had ever seen him. “Danny-o…”

“We’re sorry, Danny,” his mother had taken over, and there had been tears in her eyes. “We’re so sorry, we didn’t know-“

“You can’t be here,” Danny had said calmly enough, though his hand had been shaking.

“Danny-“ his mom had started, as she had reached towards him and Danny just couldn’t do this.

He had felt his pulse in his ear, his chest constricting and he hadn’t been able to think past the need to get out, out, out.

There’d been bright light, and then he had been away from the noise, and he had ran until he couldn’t breathe. 

And here he was getting pushed to the precipice by a fucking card.

“No,” he told himself but his eyes were already watering. “No,” he choked out, fruitlessly.

“Goddamit,” he hiccuped as tears began to fall. And then it was as if the dam had broken. Every single tear he’d managed to repress were now coming back twofold. His whole body was wrecked by big heaving sobs and he had a moment to be glad he’d found himself a secluded place to have his fit in peace.

“Oh, buddy,” he heard from behind just as the thought registered.

He turned around to find a guy in a skintight red suit looking at him.

“Are you ok?” The guy said before rallying. “That’s a dumb question, isn't it.”

The halfa just looked at the man.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Danny shook his head. He was actively trying not to think about it.

“Is it ok if I stay here ?”

Danny was too drained to care about a stranger witnessing this, so he raised his shoulders.

“I can talk if you don’t want to, I’ve been told I’m quite the motormouth.”

The man let a bit of silence pass before apparently he decided that was an agreement and he started blathering on about- rainbows was it?”

“-sure if compared against the big fishes, Rainbow Raider is far from the worst but I just can’t get over how petty his reason to turn to crime is. I’m not saying being colour blind would make being an artist easy but it doesn’t make impossible. Beethoven was deaf and look at him now! Ok that was poorly phrased, but you get what I meant-“

And on he went, talking about anything that was going through his head it seemed.

As it went on, Danny realized his hands had stopped shaking and there was a tugging at his lips that was ever so slight, but near miraculous so soon after his cry session.

“-where does the iron even come from? Like do spinach plants just make it? What does a spinach plant look like for that matter? I’m picturing like a salad plant but where do the stalks come from then,” the man hummed before there was a sound like a TV’s white noise and the man straightened. After a moment, he turned towards Danny and gave him a smile.

“I’m gonna have to run,” he said. “I’m not often in the neighborhood, so we might not meet again, so I wish you best of luck, bud.”

Another brilliant smile and he turned away.

Danny jumped forward in time to stop the man’s immediate departure. Said man turned to give Danny a quizzical look.

“Thank you,” said Danny painfully sincere.

The man’s face softened in a smile for a moment and then he was gone.

[eddsworld-the-masquerade]

Next addition to the original music roster, this time it's Matt. No lyrics again, but it's more of a realized choice than just me being lazy haha. Rambling about the song under the cut.

If I were to list inspirations, that would be "Elysia" Honkai Impact OST, Jigoku Shoujo's 3rd season ending "Ichinuke", and Beethoven. Namely "Fur Elise" (lol this name again) and "Moonlight Sonata", first movement. Fur Elise has a bit of a special connection with Matt - I even featured its music sheets in his character art (it's the texture in the background).

I guess I could also call Alice: Madness Returns an inspiration, since my brain ended up sneaking in reference to it in the backing parts. I'm not sure how noticeable it is in full audio so I rendered the bit by itself and placed it next to music in question

It was totally unconscious XD But I kept it there even after realizing. Can't say it doesn't fit though.

Like Tord's theme, there was a totally different first draft that I ended up scrapping. It sounded more jazzy and noir-ish, which I guess is closer to Matt's theme from the old AU but not what fits him NOW, exactly.

In terms of instruments used. Aside from the piano which is established as being Matt's signature instrument, it also features violin, organ and music box. Violin and strings in general always give me Victorian England vibes (again blame AMR). Organ and church bells represent Matt's outward appearance as well as a part of his backstory. The music box has most symbolic importance tied with the backstory though.

Percussion noises that sound like cutlery. I was trying to make an impression of some posh dinner party, one of the many Matt had to attend I imagine.

Generally speaking I wanted something soft and somber with some "aristocratic" vibe and I think it succeeds in this.

[manwalksintobar]

if we’ve gotta live underground and everybody’s got cancer/ will poetry be enuf?  // Eisa Davis to Ntozake Shange

         dear ntozake,

I got sacks of mercury under the skin beneath my eyes either cried too much or i’m abt to the cool war’s burnin up my retina again does poetry start where life ends? i know i’m supposed to be cool: i wear corrective lenses that feature high definition tragedy. baby in the dumpster       ethnic cleansing assassinations       multinational mergers i’m supposed to shake my head write a poem believe in ripples. but i ain’t cool. i emit inhuman noises i imagine terrorist acts as i flick my imaginary ash onto the imaginary tray i imagine going insane with a purpose and writing it down feels sorta unnecessary does poetry end where life begins? berkeley girl       black girl        red diaper baby born of the blood of the struggle but with reaganomics and prince pickin up steam in ‘81 nothing came between me and my calvins 10 yrs old       unpressed hair       playin beethoven readin madeleine l’engle       got scared in my pants when i heard this girl testifying ‘TOUSSAINT’ in the black repertory group youth ensemble i was just sittin in a rockin chair pretendin to be 82 and talkin like I knew all bout langston’s ‘rivers’

i wasn’t as good as her and i definitely wadn’t cool so i gave up drama and decided to bake soufflés zake you wda beat me up in the playground if we’da grown up together and you did eighth grade       ‘he dropped em’ at the regional oratorical competition i saw another fly honey rip it this time it’s ‘a nite with beau willie brown’ i was bleedin on the ground i became yours no more soufflés i jacked for colored girls right off my mama’s shelf my mama fania who was sweatin with you and raymond sawyer and ed mock and halifu osumare dancin on the grass       back in the day in you i found a groove never knew i had one like that did that monologue over and over alone in my room my bunk bed the proscenium arch 13 yrs old       screamin and cryin abt my kids gettin dropped out a window didn't know a damn thing about rivers but i knew abt my heart fallin        five stories you were never abbreviated or lower case to me you just pimped that irony that global badass mackadocious funkology you not only had hígado you had ben-wa balls in yr pussy

betsey brown on my godmother's couch nappy edges in mendocino at the mouth of big river spell #7 after the earthquake in silverlake the love space demands had to be in brooklyn yr poems are invitations to live in yr body love letters yr admirers dream they coulda written themselves no one cd find a category that was yr size blackety black but never blacker than thou you teased me into sassiness when i had none to speak of made profane into sacred but never formed a church sanctified women's lives whether we were reading nietzsche or a box of kotex we were magical and regular you many-tongued st louis woman of barnard and barcelona you left us the residue of yr lust left us to wander life as freely as sassafrass cypress and indigo and even the unedumacated could get yr virtuosity cuz you always fried it up in grease you built an aqueduct from lorraine hansberry's groundwater and it bubbled straight to george c wolfe you never read what the critics said and you scrunched up the flesh between yr eyebrows like everybody else in my family

but zake is poetry enuf?

i beg the question cuz you grew me up you    and adrienne kennedy     and anna deavere smith and all my mothers you blew out the candles on my 26th so when there's mercury under the skin beneath my eyes and the world ain't so cool do you write a poem or a will?

like leroi jones said     if bessie smith had killed some white people she wouldn't have needed that music so do we all write like amiri baraka does or do we all get our nat turner on?

i beg the question cuz i wanna get my life right do some real work and i really don't want to kill any white folk i mean     can we talk abt this maybe it's just my red diaper that's itchin but i still got that will to uplift the race sans bootstraps or talented tenths or paper bag tests this time we uplift the human race and i know the rainbow might be but is poetry enuf?

it's a naive question but i'm old enuf to ask them once in a while if we do finally unload the canon clean it out stock up on some more colorful balls ain't we only gettin the ones that are available at a store near you? doesn't the market end up setting the new standards anyway? is poetry enuf if it ain't sellin? if ain't nobody readin it? can poetry keep a man     who can't read from droppin his kids out a window?

and how can i call a ceasefire to this cool war in stanzas of eights when we've declared poetry a no fly zone? we have learned to protect it and its potential politics like a mother shoot down anyone who might overdetermine a poem's meaning (while we poets divebomb everyone else's politics with impunity like we're the United States or something)

if poetry is just poetry we save it from the conservatives but doesn't that mean it's of no use to the progressives?

is poetry enuf? cuz that's all i'm doin. makin up stories    on stage     on the page keepin the beat and that's all my friends are doin and that's what a lot of folks my age are doin

but if we've gone and burnt up everything in the sky if there's nothin else to eat but landfill stroganoff if we've gotta live underground and everybody's got cancer will poetry be enuf?

my aunt angela says i can do my thang and keep swinging left hooks to oppression if i stay up stay into it stay involved just one form of praxis will do. it's just my guilt that thinks i need twenty-two what's enuf?

shouldn't i (or somebody) be our secular bodhisattva become a real power player but skip the talk show can't we stabilize, rekindle collectives and cooperatives and collaborations therapeutic communities that double as creative juggernauts a publishing house     a theatre where the plays cost less than the movies get the neighborhood coven back together take dance breaks in the cubicles sing until the flourescent lights burst into snow i ask you because you changed me zake you changed thousands of women and i know poetry can't be enuf if you drunk

i ain't tryin ta walk off wid alla yr stuff and i got nuttin but love for ya so that's why i gotta know i'm sittin on my bed encircled by every book you've ever published they're open like fans marking pages with the flint of genius all i want is for this circle to grow so tell me:

is this where poetry and life are twins? i felt so crumpled up when i started writing you poetry seemed so useless and dingy next to all the bright red bad news but now that the poem is over i feel wide open like an infant of the spring just tell me how to feed this light to my responsibilities and poetry just might be enuf           love           eisa

[freakingoutthesquares]

PULP: I Spy Summer Festival Programme, 1996

Do you have good childhood memories of summer?

Yes. At the start of the six weeks of holidays from school, you've got the feeling of endless immensity and, for the first couple of weeks, carries on feeling like that. That's brilliant, and it's what everybody wants from a holiday. I'm trying desperately to tie it in with the festival.

The festival is a microcosm for that sort of thing, you’re getting a city condensed. Glastonbury is the archetypal festival, and the first time I went, we went to Stonehenge to watch the sunrise and I was taken in by it all. I had on this all-white outfit, for some reason, and I decided to hitchhike to Glastonbury from there. I felt very incongruous with all these grotty travellers, and I was walking down the road like a ghost and it was brilliant, I really got into it. Glastonbury was a great thing, but by the end of it there all these hippies dragging about in the mud, and it seemed so ugly. This beautiful spring birth thing ended up in mud and decay and disaster.

Do you have any particular summer memories?

Yeah, North Yorkshire, really, which makes you think of the kind of Hi-De-Hi sort of thing, but actually it has a coastline which is incredibly romantic in a kind of Brontës sort of way. You can find little secret coves, and if you're lucky there will be just half a dozen people looking for shellfish. I tend to get quite geological on holidays trying to find fossils and rare stones. On the beach you can occasionally find Amethyst and Amber and Jet. The Jet comes from an undersea petrified forest of monkey puzzle trees. I once found a huge piece of Amber and I like the weird local stones that you don't get anywhere else. Of course, when they dry out, they go dull, which is disappointing.

What would your ideal summer days be?

It would have to involve a picnic and a slight amount of swimming in a natural location. That's why I wouldn't live in London and have to go swimming in Hampstead Heath or whatever. (I did go swimming in London once and it wasn't a very edifying experience.) Family and friends would be there. I know exactly where I would be, but it's a very specific place in Derbyshire and hard to describe.

Summer music.

It depends on the place. One thing I found out about America was that music you couldn't listen to in England, because it would just be a joke, makes sense when you're driving across the desert. And awful Italian music that you wouldn't dream of listening to: when it's hot and you're in Italy you wouldn't listen to anything else.

How about here?

There's a lot of nice classical music Vivaldi, Verde and Beethoven have very good Summery songs.

Do you put your speakers on the windowsill?

What, to inflict it on the neighbours? No, that's very anti-social. But I tell you what I did like the idea of getting. A Peacock. They make a right good noise. It's really melancholy.

It's horrible. Don't you like it? I love it. I think it's great. I haven't had personal experience of them and maybe they're a bit impractical in the city.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How is all the touring going?

This particular bit of touring is perfectly comfortable (often with touring all becomes a bit of a grimy drag) but there is not much in the way of excitement. America was very exciting, believe it or not. I have the usual Anglophile disdain of America, but I started really liking it. I was travelling on the bus with the crew, which make all the difference. (Russell was travelling with the crew because of a morbid terror of flying.)

What memories do you have of touring?

The most exciting single thing that happened was when we played this God-awful little festival in the Midwest with all these Hick farmer types and bodysurfers, and it was incredibly still in the audience. Garbage were playing and the place was so dead that me and Candida went down the front to watch them and they were very good. By the end of Garbage we were quite fired up and decided, “Yes, we will get changed and jump about.”

Then our driver, who was an amateur Storm Chaser (he looked a bit like Anthony Perkins) had been watching the weather for the last two days, and he insisted that we leave quite early because he knew there were some storms ahead. We ended up turning all the lights off on the bus to watch this immense black cloud with lightning inside, which illuminated the cloud so you could see its internal organs, and we were listening to the local weather and it was saying ‘people in Springfield get inside the basement now, get out of your car and into a ditch! Being inside the car is no protection against the tornado!’ You could hear the panic in his voice. Then about 40 miles in front of us, you could see it pass by the road, and we followed it on the map.

We were getting near this cloud, which was about 30 miles away, and even though we couldn't see it, we knew we were in the flight path of this tornado. There was this one point where we've got in front of the cloud, but the driver was getting really agitated by the storm and needed to stop the bus to clean loads of bugs off the windscreen and Candida wanted to hire a taxi and drive into the centre of the tornado. I was tempted, but we’d driven past some of the damage that the tornado had caused. You know, I want to see a crocodile, but I don't want to put my head in its mouth!

I was very impressed with Candida. The driver had previously been saying, ‘Oh, I'd stop here, but I don't think the little lady would like it.’ She didn't give a damn. It was quite frightening and great.

Everything that day all seemed to be tied up with this Garbage business because we got to the next town and all over the toilet was all this Pulp and Garbage graffiti signed Ian. It transpired that it had been written by Ian Astbury (of the Cult) the night before. All this stuff like ‘Pulp and Garbage united together in pain and death meet up in the year 2000 and come to my city together’ or something and I was just thinking, ‘how did he know that there was this vibe happening?’ I've never met him, but I really want to meet him now.

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Do you feel different when it starts getting hot and sunny?

Well, yeah, it's that gland in the top of your head that starts getting over heated.

What happens?

You know what happens? There's a gland at the top of your head that activates sexual interest.

That's not true.

It is. That's true. Sunlight is the best for it. I think just getting a hot head isn't enough. I think it might be the ultraviolet that activates this gland.

Do you start screaming at girls and hanging out of cars?

Not really, but we can't help it, we’re chained to our own biology.

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[childoferebus]

I was challenged tagged by @parrot-parent​ to come up with an answer for every one of these music questions.  Please learn more about my music tastes than anyone should.

1:A song you like with a color in the title: Favorite Color is Blue by Robert Delong ft. K.Flay, which I am not allowed to link to directly for some reason.  I’m going to get The Vermin Survive tattoo’d at some point when I can figure out a design for it.  (If you’re a tattoo artist, hmu 👀

2:A song you like with a number in the title

A Complete List of Fears Ages 5-28 (Aprox) by The Yellow Dress. I want to lick it.

3:A song that reminds you of summertime

The first thing that came to mind was When It’s Over by Sugar Ray, because I’m absolutely ancient by tumblr standards.

4:A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about

Love Me Dead by Ludo, but not for the reasons you’d think.

5:A song that needs to be played LOUD

Hellbent by Mystery Skulls, which is only correct when it’s loud enough to blow my speakers and my eardrums.

6:A song that makes you want to dance

Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Popping Daddies. Shouts to the time my prom date got pissed at me for dancing to this when they didn’t want to lol

7:A song to drive to

On the Road Again by Willy Nelson is the first song on my roadtrip playlist, as is good and right.

8:A song about drugs or alcohol

Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind is the most obvious song about crystal meth that has ever been played and I don’t care it is my favorite song of all time, it delights me

9:A song that makes you happy

Cheesecake Truck by King Missile.  So then I got this idea about driving a cheesecake truck

10:A song that makes you sad

Your Voice as I Remember It by AJJ.  I have an entire playlist dedicated to songs I can’t sing along with without crying but this was the first that came to mind.  Notable other mentions are What Sarah Said by Death Cab for Cutie and A Plea from a Cat Named Virtue by the Weakerthans

11:A song that you never get tired of

BlackBoxWarrior (OK Ultra) by Will Wood. I can and have listened to this song on repeat for hours at a time.

12:A song from your preteen years

Preteens.  Jesus. Are you sure you want me to delve back that far?  Anyway, when I was around that age I was really into Jewel, so probably Little Sister.  Which is also a song about drugs.

13:One of your favorite 80’s songs

Safety Dance by Men Without Hats is the correct answer.

14:A song that you would love played at your wedding

Brand New Colony by the Postal Service.  I eloped so I don’t get any wedding music, but I’ve made a wedding playlist for my OCs and I’m totally normal about the fact that this is the first song

15:A song that is a cover by another artist

You Oughta Know by the Killing Moon is one of my favorite covers of all time by virtue of them not changing the pronouns

16:One of your favorite classical songs

The hardest part of this meme isn’t thinking of songs for every ask it’s picking which out of the dozen possible answers for every question that I’m going to go with. I listened exclusively to classic piano for like 2 years in my teens.  Anyway, tough call but I gotta go with the Moonlight Sonata Third Movement by Beethoven.  From what I was told, it was written as he was losing both his sight and his hearing and it’s so aggressive and mournful because of it.  Beethoven was a prick but man the dude could play.

17:A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke

Snow Miser/Heat Miser. Get that shit stuck in your head and sing with me.

18:A song from the year that you were born

Listen I’m not going to date myself out loud so if you want to know that bad you can look and see.

19:A song that makes you think about life

This might be the hardest one to answer yet.  I don’t know man, every song makes me think about life. All of them do. What aspect of life? What topic? So here’s one, I guess: White Noise by Will Wood.

20:A song that has many meanings to you

Weak and Powerless by A Perfect Circle. I know it’s about drugs, but man if you take it literally...

21:A favorite song with a person’s name in the title

Jacqueline by Circa Waves. Please watch the video. Please.

22:A song that moves you forward

Point to Prove (I Was An Ugly Kid) by Bug Hunter. yeah.

23:A song that you think everybody should listen to

Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) by Baz Luhrman.  Get to it.

24:A song by a band you wish were still together

Inexplicable by the Correspondents.  If I don’t think about it too hard I’ll be fine.

25:A song by an artist no longer living

Faint by Linkin Park. IF I DON’T THINK ABOUT IT TOO HARD I’LL BE FINE.

26:A song that makes you want to fall in love

Passenger Seat by Death Cab for Cutie. 

27:A song that breaks your heart

Well if you’re going to do this to me twice in a row, What Sarah Said by Death Cab for Cutie.  I put my mp3 player on shuffle after my adopted grandfather died suddenly and violently to try and calm myself and this is the first song that played and I’ve never been okay since.  Love is watching someone die.

28:A song by an artist with a voice that you love

Grace for Sale by Terrance Zdunich.  Tough call but considering I stole his voice for Taj Na...

29:A song that you remember from your childhood

I Will Buy You a New Life by Everclear, which one of my classmates was obsessed with, and played every lunch at school for months.  Jimmy you were 12 what was it about this song that spoke to you so much

30:A song that reminds you of yourself

Kokopelli Face Tattoo by AJJ.  I have a viper rune tattoo because of it.

[not-me-underc0ver]

The night started off boring.

Peter absolutely did not plan for any of this to happen.

He was going to have a completely normal, night-in. He was going to make good choices. He had planned on finishing his essay and getting some homework done a couple of weeks before it was due. Sure, some of it the teacher hadn’t gone over yet, but it wasn’t that complicated.

Peter promises those were his plans.

But, along the way, to his bag, he tripped and a’ccidentally fell out of the apartment and into a party.

Peter swears that that is exactly what happened.

One second he was on his way to put on some pajamas and the next he was wearing jeans and a crop top. He really doesn’t remember anything in between those two things.

He had every intention of listening to some white noise or perhaps even one of Beethoven’s symphonies while he relaxed in his room. He has no idea how he got to the house.

Has no idea how stretching turned into dancing to ridiculously loud music that was almost overstimulating if not for the substance, that he has no idea how it got, in his system.

But, it happened.

Somehow, some way that wasn’t at all Peter’s fault - he had ended up dancing at a party. He had downed four red Solo cups and eaten two brownies.

He has no idea how any of those got into his hands. He swears.

It’s too bad Tony doesn’t believe him when he says that.

(just a small thing i typed up)

[musewrangler]

I was thinking about this at work, and I must know:

If your Empire Reimagined characters were in the modern world, what would some of their favorite bands/artists/songs be? (My theory is, Piett would like Simon & Garfunkel, but that's just me)

First we need to establish that you are wonderful for thinking about this at work. ;D I love it.

And it is now your fault that I can't do anything else until I answer this hilarious plunge down the imagination. So. Cracks knuckles. Here we go:

Contrary to what you might think, it is Anakin who likes Simon and Garfunkle. They strike the right note of melancholy for him, without being too dark and angsty. He's trying not to allow outside stimuli to drag him to darkness again. Luke likes this too and Leia rolls her eyes at both of them and refuses to allow it to play in her house.

Han is a classic 80s band guy. U2, Bon Jovi, Journey, ACDC, Wham, Queen, Blondie---he loves it all. Leia likes some songs from some of these artists and they can be seen dancing together to these pieces. There was one legendary night at Sola and Firmus's place when they'd enjoyed a good dinner and good wine that Han and Leia did karaoke for 'Don't Stop Believin', belting it at the top of their lungs to the point that the neighbors commed to complain about noise, but Firmus let Luke talk to them and they came over and had wine and were fine about it. Even requested 'Hungry Like the Wolf'.

Veers also likes ACDC if only for 'Back in Black' as it reminds him of his tank divisions in the Middle East and the camraderie of his men who picked this song as their anthem. He doesn't mind most of Han's music---it hits the right notes literally, though he's not a big Hughie Lewis and the News fan in spite of Back to the Future.

While we're on Veers, he REALLY likes Queen, and the early 2000s hard rock. He also is a dork about the Beatles---something Firmus really loves to give him a hard time about----and Leia and he have trivia battles regularly about this as she likes them too. [Myra loved the Beatles, and so while Firmus likes to tease Max, he also has every single song on his playlist ready if requested.]

Luke is a Maroon Five, Plain White T's, Coldplay, Greenday, The Fray sort of guy, but if you want to see him air guitar [and he has and Han recorded it] watch him with the Black Eyed Peas. I know. No one called that, but it's awesome. He genuinely likes most of the other music his friends and family do, and Leia shares his love of Coldplay.

Piett is quite eclectic in taste. He and Veers can be found nodding their heads and looking very satisfied when CCR is playing, especially Fortunate Son. His favorites to tend toward the 70s rock, so the Eagles, The Dooby Brothers, Moody Blues, and Styx are favorites. However, Firmus LOVES good jazz and swing music. So he can equally be found playing Sinatra, Crosby, Bobby Darin, Big Fat Voodoo Daddy and Nat King Cole. He and Sola are really good dance partners by now and Leia loves capturing sweet moments in their kitchen when they're making dinner for the family and the Admiral takes Sola by the waist to spin her round the island impressively to the King of Swing.

He also loves great classical pieces like Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G major or Handel or Beethoven. This is good because his adopted son in all but name is a classical freak.

Scraps is KEEN. Matthew is all things classical and is an utter NERD about this. He knows ridiculous amounts and can name a piece after just the first five notes.

He also plays the cello himself and does so beautifully though none of them knew this until four years into knowing him.

Leia, as mentioned, loves Coldplay and some of the 80s bands Han does. She refuses to listen to music she has deemed 'boring and slow' [pointed look to Anakin and Luke] though she seems to enjoy Piett's jazz and it is rarely fast paced so.

Leia has a country streak though she is picky here as well. She adores Cash, Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert, and ZZ Top. [There are pitched discussions over whether that last is properly country, but Han takes her side---shocker---mostly because he likes the song 'Well Dressed Man'] She has a hilarious affection for 'Ice Ice Baby' which many of her friends find strange since she doesn't like cold typically, but she will bop to this any time any where. Han tried putting it on during an argument once and she managed to carry on yelling for another minute before she broke.

It only worked once though.

Thank you @accidental-spice! This was really fun!

[spikygurl89]

Books Read / To Be Read in 2023

Updated 1/29/23

Read in 2023 How to Write a Song That Matters - Dar Williams How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention - Daniel L. Everett Currently Reading in 2023 The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within - Stephen Fry Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music - Hugh Barker Piranesi - Susanna Clarke The Red House Mystery - A. A. Milne To Be Read in 2023 - Non Fiction Dear Mr Andrews - Latham, Lotte Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose - Cowart, Leigh How to Read Literature Like a Professor - Foster, Thomas C. The Anatomy of Anxiety: Rethinking the Body, Mind, and Healing of Anxiety - Vora, Ellen The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of "Proper" English, from Shakespeare to South Park - Lynch, Jack Noise: a Human History of Sound and Listening - Hendy, David Rude: Stop Being Nice and Start Being Bold - Reid, Rebecca The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters - Rachel, Daniel Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life - Nagoski, Emily The Embodied Mind: Understanding the Mysteries of Cellular Memory, Consciousness, and Our Bodies - Verny, Thomas R. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good - Brown, Adrienne Maree First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time - Chapman, Emma Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages - Deutscher, Guy Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter - Errico, Mike Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation - DuMez, Kristin Kobes A Sense of Self: Memory, the Brain, and Who We Are - O'Keane, Veronica Priestdaddy - Lockwood, Patricia Appetites: Why Women Want - Knapp, Caroline Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love - Prioleau, Elizabeth The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You - Aron, Elaine N. You're History: The Twelve Strangest Women in Music - Chow, Lesley Burn It Down: Women Writing about Anger - Dancyger, Lilly Fear Is My Homeboy: How to Slay Doubt, Boss Up, and Succeed on Your Own Terms - Holler, Judi Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance - Tan, Siu-Lan How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond - Powell, John Together: Why Social Connection Holds the Key to Better Health, Higher Performance, and Greater Happiness - Murthy, Vivek Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious - Damasio, Antonio R. Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World - Lewis, Jacqui The Kindness Cure: How the Science of Compassion Can Heal Your Heart and Your World - Cousineau, Tara How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back - Tweedy, Jeff Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? - Smith, Julie The Sunny Nihilist: A Declaration of the Pleasure of Pointlessness - Syfret, Wendy Awake Where You Are: The Art of Embodied Awareness - Aylward, Martin The Wakeful Body: Somatic Mindfulness as a Path to Freedom - Baker, Willa I Didn't Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt to Embrace the Hidden Value in Daily Life - Dore, Madeleine A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution - Popkin, Jeremy D. The Atoms Of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules Of Grammar - Baker, Mark C. The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language - Pullum, Geoffrey K. The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos - Batalion, Judy A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain - Peskin, Sara Manning Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters - Monroe, Marilyn The Assertiveness Guide for Women: How to Communicate Your Needs, Set Healthy Boundaries, and Transform Your Relationships - Julie de Azevedo Hanks, PhD Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty... And Start Speaking Up, Saying No, Asking Boldly, And Unapologetically Being Yourself - Gazipura, Aziz The Nice Girl Syndrome: Stop Being Manipulated and Abused -- And Start Standing Up for Yourself - Engel, Beverly Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe - Johnson, George Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman - Petersen, Anne Helen Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time - Buonomano, Dean Music, Math, and Mind: The Physics and Neuroscience of Music - Sulzer, David Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics - Benade, Arthur H. Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts - Bell, Matt How to Write Like Tolstoy: A Journey Into the Minds of Our Greatest Writers - Cohen, Richard A. Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You - Nerenberg, Jenara Bow Down: Lessons from Dominatrixes on How to Be a Boss in Life, Love, and Work - Goldwert, Lindsay Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - Fitzgerald, F. Scott Bodyfulness: Somatic Practices for Presence, Empowerment, and Waking Up in This Life - Caldwell, Christine Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture - Donaghue, Chris The Art of Possibility - Zander, Rosamund Stone Physics and Music: The Science of Musical Sound - White, Harvey E. Music and Mantras: The Yoga of Mindful Singing for Health, Happiness, Peace & Prosperity - Girish The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World - trevor cox Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World - Kraus, Nina Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger - Traister, Rebecca The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again - Price, Catherine Big Wild Love: The Unstoppable Power of Letting Go - Murray, Jill Sherer Sensitive Is the New Strong: The Power of Empaths in an Increasingly Harsh World - Moorjani, Anita Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief - Kessler, David Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music - Robbins, Michael Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting - Gauthier, Mary The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination - Le Guin, Ursula K. How a Poem Moves: A Field Guide for Readers Afraid of Poetry - Sol, Adam The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain - Flaherty, Alice W. Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club - Edwards, Martin Writing Poetry To Save Your Life: How To Find The Courage To Tell Your Stories - Gillan, Maria Mazziotti Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein - Bernstein, Jamie It's Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer - Milne, A.A. Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships - Ryan, Christopher Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love - Levine, Amir Mating in Captivity: In Search of Erotic Intelligence - Perel, Esther You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity - Finch, Jamie Lee #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing - Allison, Emily Joy The Journey from Abandonment to Healing - Anderson, Susan How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't - Moore, Lane From Heartbreak to Wholeness: The Hero's Journey to Joy - Carlson, Kristine How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love - Ury, Logan Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love - Baum, Jessica The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read - Leedom, Tim C. Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion - Winell, Marlene A Manual for Being Human - Mort, Sophie Whenever You're Ready: How to Compose the Life of Your Dreams - Kim, Jeeyoon Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive - Neff, Kristin This Is Not a Book about Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends on It - Carvan, Tabitha Find Your True Voice: Stop Listening to Your Inner Critic, Heal Your Trauma and Live a Life Full of Joy - Brunner, Emmy Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession - Bolin, Alice No Kidding: Women Writers on Bypassing Parenthood - Mantel, Henriette Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown's Cult Classic - Smith, Eliza No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to HearBowler, Kate Little Weirds - Slate, Jenny The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth - Spitzer, Michael Why Good Sex Matters: Understanding the Neuroscience of Pleasure for a Smarter, Happier, and More Purpose-Filled Life - Wise, Nan The French Revolution: From Enlightenment to Tyranny - Davidson, Ian The Golden Age of Murder - Edwards, Martin Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty - Etcoff, Nancy L. Real Men Don't Sing: Crooning in American Culture - McCracken, Allison Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood - Mann, William J. Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them - Prose, Francine The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language - Bragg, Melvyn Seven Types of Ambiguity - Empson, William The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language - Turner, Mark Blood Relations: The Selected Letters of Ellery Queen 1947-1950 - Goodrich, Joseph Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language - McCulloch, Gretchen Mind – A Journey to the Heart of Being Human - Siegel, Daniel J. The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind - Gazzaniga, Michael S. The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race - Lieberman, Daniel Z. The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness - Solms, Mark Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience - Graziano, Michael S.A. Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive - Brackett, Marc The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences - Riess, Helen Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion - Tolentino, Jia The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent—and Reinvent—Our Identities - Berns, Gregory The Power of Agency: The 7 Principles to Conquer Obstacles, Make Effective Decisions, and Create a Life on Your Own Terms - Napper, Paul Don't Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems - Burt, Stephanie Singing School: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters - Pinsky, Robert The Sound of Poetry / The Poetry of Sound - Perloff, Marjorie The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide - Pinsky, Robert The Poetics of American Song Lyrics - Pence, Charlotte The Poetry of Pop - Bradley, Adam Laziness Does Not Exist - Price, Devon In Awe: Rediscover Your Childlike Wonder to Unleash Inspiration, Meaning, and Joy - O'Leary, John It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle - Wolynn, Mark The Child in You: The Breakthrough Method for Bringing Out Your Authentic Self - Stahl, Stefanie The Good Girl’s Guide To Being A Dck: The art of saying what you want, asking for what you need and getting the life you deserve - Reinwarth, Alexandra The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully - Ostaseski, Frank Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger - Chemaly, Soraya Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement - Karlgaard, Rich Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste - Gasser, Nolan Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women - Engeln, Renee A People's History of the United States - Zinn, Howard The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World's Leading Neuroscientists - Marcus, Gary F. The Brain: The Story of You - Eagleman, David Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts - Dehaene, Stanislas How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed - Kurzweil, Ray Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom - Hanson, Rick Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain - Damasio, Antonio R. Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life - Johnson, Steven The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness - Damasio, Antonio R. Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World - Zimmer, Carl How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain - Barrett, Lisa Feldman Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain - Eagleman, David Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space - Levin, Janna The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime - Flanders, Judith The Art of the English Murder: From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock - Worsley, Lucy To Be Read in 2023 - Fiction The Lost Apothecary - Penner, Sarah The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - Schwab, V.E. Wakenhyrst - Paver, Michelle Garden Spells (Waverley Family, #1) - Allen, Sarah Addison Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception (Books of Faerie, #1) - Stiefvater, Maggie All the Crooked Saints - Stiefvater, Maggie Heartsick (Archie Sheridan & Gretchen Lowell, #1) - Cain, Chelsea Not Even Bones (Market of Monsters, #1) - Schaeffer, Rebecca If We Were Villains - Rio, M.L. Eileen - Moshfegh, Ottessa A Certain Hunger - Summers, Chelsea G. Wild is the Witch - Griffin, Rachel The Whalebone Theatre - Quinn, Joanna The Girl from the Other Side: Siúil, A Rún, Vol. 1 (The Girl from the Other Side, #1) - Nagabe Siren Queen - Vo, Nghi Poison for Breakfast - Snicket, Lemony The Essex Serpent - Perry, Sarah A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (The Shadow Histories, #1) - Parry, H.G. We Are the Fire - Taylor, Sam Flyaway - Jennings, Kathleen Hild (The Light of the World Trilogy, #1) - Griffith, Nicola Ring Shout - Clark, P. Djèlí Anatomy: A Love Story - Schwartz, Dana Comfort Me with Apples - Valente, Catherynne M. In the Ravenous Dark - Strickland, A.M. Small Favors - Craig, Erin A. The Bone Maker - Durst, Sarah Beth The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home (Welcome to Night Vale #3) - Fink, Joseph You Feel It Just Below the Ribs - Cranor, Jeffrey Deathless - Valente, Catherynne M. Tripping Arcadia: A Gothic Novel - Mayquist, Kit Nothing But Blackened Teeth - Khaw, Cassandra Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology - Wells, Richard Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Tokarczuk, Olga The House in the Cerulean Sea - Klune, T.J. The Wilds - Elliott, Julia Foul Lady Fortune (Foul Lady Fortune, #1) - Gong, Chloe Spells for Forgetting: A Novel - Young, Adrienne Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution - Kuang, R.F. Nettle & Bone - Kingfisher, T. Tell the Wolves I'm Home - Brunt, Carol Rifka Villainous: An Anthology of Fairytale Retellings - Ward, L.T. The Glass Woman - Lea, Caroline For the Wolf (Wilderwood, #1) - Whitten, Hannah The Wolf and the Woodsman - Reid, Ava What We Devour - Miller, Linsey Down Comes the Night - Saft, Allison The City Beautiful - Polydoros, Aden Wake the Bones - Kilcoyne, Elizabeth The Other Girl - Major, C.D. Plain Bad Heroines - Danforth, Emily M. The Year of the Witching (Bethel, #1) - Henderson, Alexis Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) - Muir, Tamsyn Rebel Rose (The Queen's Council, #1) - Theriault, Emma Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1) - McGuire, Seanan The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home (Fairyland, #5) - Valente, Catherynne M. The Boy Who Lost Fairyland (Fairyland, #4) - Valente, Catherynne M. Radiance - Valente, Catherynne M. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories - Clarke, Susanna The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Shaffer, Mary Ann To Be Read in 2023 - Folklore The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales - Zipes, Jack D. Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature - Stewart, Susan The Mythology of Fairies: The tales and legends of fairies from all over the world - Keightley, Thomas Discovering the Inner Mother - Webster, Bethany Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine - Wilson, Sarah Durham Beowulf: A New Translation - Unknown, Maria Dahvana Headley Fearsome Fairies: Haunting Tales of the Fae - Dearnley, Elizabeth The Fairy Tellers - Jubber, Nicholas Folklore 101: An Accessible Introduction to Folklore Studies - Jorgensen, Jeana Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre - Zipes, Jack D. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales - Bettelheim, Bruno The Book of English Magic - Carr-Gomm, Philip On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears - Asma, Stephen T.

[oskuleinonenphotography]

Ambient Music Space - Ambient Music Chill - Music For Reading - Aesthetic Lake Nature

Hi! Read more at https://amzn.to/3paACgn AND https://www.oskuleinonenphotography.com Do you ever need help focusing on your reading or studying? Do you find yourself easily distracted by the noises around you? Well, I have the solution for you - music for reading! Music can be a powerful tool for enhancing productivity and focus. Studies have shown that music can activate different brain areas, improve concentration, and reduce stress. But not all music is created equal regarding reading or studying. You want to avoid music with lyrics or a robust and upbeat tempo - these can be more distracting than helpful. Instead, opt for instrumental or classical music, which can provide a calming background without drawing too much attention. Some prefer to listen to music with white noise or natural sounds, which can also effectively block out external distractions. What are some excellent options for music for reading? Some classical music favorites include the works of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Jazz and blues music can also be conducive to concentration, with artists such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane being popular choices. Playlists and channels are explicitly dedicated to music for reading on platforms like YouTube and Spotify. These playlists can include a variety of genres and styles, so you can find the perfect playlist to suit your preferences. It’s important to note that the music you choose for reading should be low volume - you want it to be quiet enough not to cause distraction but present adequately to provide a calming background. So why not try incorporating music into your reading routine and see how it can improve your focus and productivity? Whether studying for exams, working on a project, or just trying to read a book, music for reading can be a great tool to help you stay on task and block out external distractions. So light up some candles, grab your book, and let the music take you away to a place of focus and concentration. Happy reading! Types of Nature Photography If you're a photography enthusiast, you know there's no better way to spend time outdoors than by capturing the beauty of nature through your lens. Nature photography is about creating aesthetically pleasing images of the natural world and showcasing its many wonders. One type of nature photography that has gained widespread popularity is landscape Contemporary Photography Poster photography. It involves capturing the beauty of the great outdoors, including mountains, forests, and oceans. Landscape photography is a great way to inspire others to explore the beauty of nature and appreciate the world around us. Another popular type of nature photography is waterfall photography. This type of photography involves capturing the majesty of waterfalls as they cascade down rocks and hillsides. Whether you're a professional photographer or just starting, taking pictures of waterfalls can be an enriching experience. Spending time in nature and capturing its beauty will create stunning photographs and foster a deeper appreciation for the natural world. So, whether you prefer landscape or waterfall photography, nature photography is a great way to combine your passion for photography with your love of the outdoors. So grab your camera and start exploring the world around you! Beautiful Nature Photography Quotes Nature photography has a unique way of captivating the soul. Through a camera lens, we can capture the enchanting beauty of our surroundings. The scenery that seems ordinary to the naked eye can transform into a masterpiece when viewed through a nature photo. The sky is a canvas of colors that paint a picture beyond imagination. The outdoors becomes a sanctuary where one can immerse in the wonders of nature, indulging in its vast wilderness and awe-inspiring scenery. It's no wonder why so many people have taken an interest in nature photography, as it allows us to relive moments of serenity and appreciate the essence of our natural world. Beautiful nature photography quotes have the power to motivate us to explore, embrace and enjoy nature from a whole new perspective. So whether you're a professional photographer or simply an admirer of nature, remember that every nature photo has a unique story to tell. Through it, we can capture the beauty of our surroundings and relish the great outdoors experience. So next time you find yourself appreciating the beauty of a stunning landscape or the mesmerizing colors of the sky, take a moment to capture the moment with a nature photo and let its beauty inspire you to explore and appreciate the world around you. Remember one thing, "Be the eyes of the world and save it. Capturing nature through the lens is a true passion." As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

[worldrankmusic]

As many of us know, getting in the right frame of mind to be productive can sometimes be a challenge. The right kind of music can help set the tone and atmosphere for getting work done. So, what is the best music to listen to when you need to be productive? Let's explore some of the top genres and options for boosting productivity. Classical Music One of the most popular genres for boosting productivity is classical music. There is something about the calming and uplifting sounds of classical composers like Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach that can help improve focus and concentration. In fact, a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that workers who listened to classical music while performing tasks were more productive and made fewer errors. Ambient Music Another popular genre for boosting productivity is ambient music. These sounds typically include nature sounds, white noise, and instrumental tracks that create a calming and relaxing atmosphere. Ambient music can be helpful in blocking out distracting background noises and can promote a sense of focus and relaxation. Popular ambient artists include Brian Eno, Steve Roach, and Tangerine Dream. Video Game Soundtracks For those who are looking for a more unconventional option, video game soundtracks can be a great choice. Many video game soundtracks are specifically designed to enhance players' focus and concentration, making them perfect for those looking to boost their productivity. Some popular video games that offer inspiring soundtracks include Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, and Chrono Trigger. Nature Sounds If you're looking for something that's not music, but still provides an enjoyable ambiance, try listening to nature sounds. These sounds can include anything from thunderstorms to ocean waves and can be incredibly calming and relaxing. One study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that playing natural sounds in the workplace can help reduce stress levels and improve overall mood and well-being. Pump-Up Music For those who need to get in the right mindset to power through work, pump-up music can be a great option. These tracks often have a faster tempo and feature upbeat, motivating lyrics that can help get you pumped up and ready to tackle any task. Popular pump-up artists include Eminem, Queen, and AC/DC. In conclusion, the right kind of music can make a huge impact on your productivity levels. Whether you prefer classical music, ambient sounds, video game soundtracks, nature sounds, or pump-up music, there are plenty of options to choose from. So, why not give it a try and see how much you can boost your productivity with the perfect work music? Boost Your Productivity with the Best Work Music

[princessnotfound]

📼

His fingers ache. It's nothing new. He wonders if it is an occurrence for all young pianists or if he simply has not yet adapted deftness. Cushioning does not stop the edge of the stool from digging into the flesh and marrow beneath his knees -- he's sitting incorrectly. George shuffles to perch uncomfortably on the edge of the stool. His feet can reach the pedals with ease now. There is no room for faults.

Residual notes of Chopin's Nocturne dissipate and his hands are moving again already. Guiding chords into an introduction before the silence can fully settle, pushing every key with reluctant precision. Holding his breath as he holds the notes. He wavers like the strings within when the keys are released again. There are no pages before him; Beethoven's Pathetique is etched into the darkness beneath his eyelids.

Behind him, silver and glass clink. Cutlery scrapes against porcelain plates and he scrunches his nose at the scent of honey-glazed gammon. Somewhere on the table, his plate is untouched. He cannot touch his seat at the dining table until his piano stool cries out from holding his weight for so long. Cannot bring utensils into the warmth of his palm until black and white keys burn from his touch. No one drags their trophies and achievements along with them, after all. They're admired from afar. Even if they are living.

No one is watching him, but eyes of the past bore into his back. Burn through an uncomfortable blazer that is too tight around his wrists and watch to see his soul break apart when he merges with song. Narrowed judgement hidden in the glint of pupils and sharp tongues with too much to say. They keep his posture in check, his head up and eyes straight. Staring at the morbid reflection of someone in the polished, painted wood. He is not the person he should be. Empty stare and blank expression. Formalwear and slicked-back hair that has been brushed into perfect position like a doll. Inanimate, save for gliding fingers.

Is that all he is? Background noise? An unnecessary addition to obnoxious conversation? They are entertainment. Like a circus animal.

Ten bars have never felt so agonizingly slow. Grave. George finds that they loathe Beethoven.

They bleed into the exposition.

Smearing red along white keys until vermillion is dripping onto an expensive fur carpet. They wish it was real. They cannot count the amount of mistakes made on their fingers, but it doesn't matter. Their audience does not know what they are listening to. George could butcher every chord, ignore every modulation. They could slack on the tempo, misread the mordents, weigh on the peddle until it snaps off and no one would bat an eye. Because as long as dainty notes echo throughout the dining room, that is good enough for them. Why does he pour himself into music that people do not care for?

He only knows how to play the first movement. Ten minutes of an hour's worth of song. Yet, seethe as he might, he cannot bring himself to destroy the rest of such an ancient darling sonata. Repetition will have to do.

[coleadams2]

Fourth ‘Music and Sound Synthesis’ Session

In todays session named ‘Switched On’, we were shown tracks through the 60s and 70s that exclusively used synthesisers. A common trend was to do covers of classical music, starting with  Wendy Carlos’ ‘Switched-On Bach’ where in 1970, won Grammy’s for Best Classical Album, Best Classical Performance and Best Engineered Classical Recording. They were also hired by Stanley Kubrick to compose synth covers of Beethoven pieces for the movie adaptation of ‘A Clockwork Orange’. We also had a discussion about the difference between a piece being performed or composed if done on synths since artists can easily add their own timbral variations to the piece. 

After this we are introduced to a condensed version of how to operate VCV rack for our home systems, however I did not understand a lot of the terminology. If I were able to visualise it by having my laptop with me and being able to do it there and then, I think I would’ve understood it more.

The first practical task was about emulating real life instruments. To start off simple, we began with attempting to replicate a flute. In regards to what waveform to use, a sine wave seemed the most suitable since it isn’t as harsh and aggressive compared to a sawtooth or triangle for example. Utilising the ADSR module, a fast attack was used to imitate the time between the air leaving the player’s mouth and the sound coming out of the flute. Next, an oscillator producing pink noise was used to imitate the sound of the playing breathing into the flute. The result was basic, but gave us a good understanding of what elements we would need to think about if we were to recreate real sounds using synths.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DcntliJWjqQyX1dVXHzbfulrEyVnDTcy/view?usp=share_link

The next practical task was to create a collection of percussion patches that can be triggered. Using what I learnt from the previous task, I wanted to start with a kick drum since it seemed easy to replicate: a low sine wave to imitate the low-frequencies, and then pink noise with a filter on to emulate the sound of the beater hitting the skin. From this, Matt explained the main differences of white and pink noise. White noise is a constant amplitude across all frequencies, whereas pink noise sounds as if it has a filter on it, where the higher the frequency, the lower the amplitude. Whilst experimenting with pink noise, we created a sound that is somewhat reminiscent of helicopter blades flying overhead, which I plan on using as an introduction to one of my pieces for the final submission of this module.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hGwg23zgjGRgiCjODx2nvviSrx9qEF7C/view?usp=share_link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_3hTo9Ho4iM3htBFXp2LqQvKSXJsQVXy/view?usp=share_link

[palbuys]

12 Types of Music Which Makes You Sleep All Night!

Are you tired of tossing and turning all night long, counting sheep until the early hours of the morning? You are the 1 in 3, According to CDC. In 2022, American Sleep Apnea Association (ASAA) estimated Sleep-related issues to impact 50 to 70 million Americans of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. The most prevalent sleep conditions include narcolepsy, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, and insomnia. Have you ever considered using music as a tool to help you nod off? Studies have shown that listening to certain types of music before bed can help relax the mind and body, promoting deeper and more restful sleep. So let’s start exploring the 12 types of music which makes you sleep all night.

From the calming effects of white noise to the sleep-promoting benefits of classical music, we will dive into the different types of music that can help you get a good night’s sleep. So, whether you are struggling with insomnia or just looking for a new way to improve your sleep, read on to find out how music can help you fall asleep.

1. Classic Music for Sleep

Studies have shown that classical music, especially pieces composed by Mozart and Beethoven, can have a calming effect and help with sleep.

Here are some examples of classical music that can help you fall asleep:

“Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy

“Moonlight Sonata” by Ludwig van Beethoven

“Canon in D Major” by Johann Pachelbel

“The Four Seasons: Spring” by Antonio Vivaldi

“Nocturnes” by Frédéric Chopin

“Lullaby for String Orchestra” by Johannes Brahms

“Swan Lake Suite” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“Reverie” by Gabriel Fauré

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Felix Mendelssohn

“The Planets: Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” by Gustav Holst

2. Sounds of Nature Relaxing Music

Studies have found that the sounds of nature can be relaxing and help to create a peaceful environment for sleep.

Ocean Waves: The sound of gently crashing waves can be calming and soothing, helping to reduce stress and promote relaxation.

Rain: The sound of rainfall can create a peaceful and calming atmosphere, making it easier to fall asleep.

Thunderstorms: For some people, the sound of thunder and lightning can be relaxing and help them fall asleep faster.

Forest Sounds: The sounds of nature, such as birds chirping, leaves rustling, and streams flowing, can create a peaceful and calming environment.

Fireplace: The crackling sound of a fire can create a warm and cozy atmosphere, making it easier to fall asleep.

Waterfall: The sound of a waterfall can create a peaceful and calming atmosphere, helping to reduce stress and promote relaxation.

Wind Chimes: The soft and soothing sound of wind chimes can help to calm the mind and promote relaxation.

Crickets: The sound of crickets chirping can create a peaceful and calming atmosphere, making it easier to fall asleep.

3. Sleep Music White Noise

White noise is a constant, neutral sound that serves as a way to induce relaxation and better sleep by blocking out any other sounds that may cause a disturbance, such as the noise from traffic, barking dogs, or snoring.

Examples of White noise :

Fan noise: The sound of a fan running can create a consistent and soothing background noise that can help mask other sounds and promote relaxation and sleep.

Rainstorm noise: The sound of rainfall, whether it be gentle or heavy, can create a calming and peaceful background noise that can help mask other sounds and promote sleep.

Static TV/Radio noise: Static TV and Radio noise are often used as a form of white noise to help people sleep.

You can try other noises like Pink noise which is a little deeper than White noise, Red noise, or brown noise little deeper than pink and white noise (Ex: Thunder or Strong Waterfalls).

4. Ambient Music to Sleep

Ambient music is a genre of music that is characterized by its calming, repetitive, and atmospheric qualities. This type of music can help individuals fall asleep by promoting relaxation, reducing stress, and creating a calming atmosphere.

Here are a few examples of ambient music that can be used to promote sleep:

Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports”: This album is considered one of the pioneers of ambient music and is known for its calming, atmospheric soundscapes.

Steve Roach’s “Structures from Silence”: This album features long, slow-moving pieces that are designed to promote relaxation and calm the mind.

Harold Budd’s “The Pearl”: This album features soft, atmospheric soundscapes that are designed to promote relaxation and sleep.

Ludovico Einaudi’s “Divenire”: This album features soft, piano-based pieces that are designed to promote relaxation and sleep.

William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops”: This album features repetitive, slow-moving pieces that are designed to promote relaxation and sleep.

5. Sleep Music Binaural Beats

Binaural beats are a type of music that uses specific sound frequencies to alter the brain waves and promote relaxation. that involves listening to two different frequencies in each ear, to promote relaxation and sleep. Here are a few examples of binaural beats for sleep:

Delta waves: Delta waves are the slowest frequency of binaural beats and are associated with deep sleep. Listening to delta wave binaural beats can help individuals relax and fall into a deep sleep more easily.

Theta waves: Theta waves are associated with light sleep and meditation. Listening to theta wave binaural beats can help individuals relax and calm their minds, making it easier to fall asleep.

Gamma waves: Gamma waves are associated with alertness and cognitive function. However, listening to gamma wave binaural beats can also help to relax the mind and promote sleep.

Alpha waves: Alpha waves are associated with relaxation and a calm mind. Listening to alpha wave binaural beats can help to calm the mind and promote relaxation, making it easier to fall asleep.

6. Yoga and Meditation Music

Yoga and meditation music can help promote sleep by creating a calming and relaxing atmosphere. The slow and repetitive sounds, combined with guided breathing and relaxation techniques, can help individuals calm their minds and ease into a restful sleep.

Here are a few examples of yoga and meditation music that can be used to promote sleep:

“Deep Sleep Music Academy”: This album features soft and calming music that is designed to help individuals fall asleep.

“Meditation for Sleep”: This album features guided meditations and soft music that is designed to help individuals fall asleep.

“Yoga Nidra for Sleep”: This album features guided yoga nidra meditations and soft music that is designed to help individuals fall asleep.

“Relaxing Music for Sleep”: This album features soft and calming music that is designed to help individuals fall asleep.

“Sleep Soundly”: This album features guided meditations and soft music that is designed to help individuals fall asleep.

7. Reiki Music for Sleep

Reiki music is specifically designed to balance the energy in the body and promote relaxation, making it ideal for sleep.

This music is often slow, calming, and repetitive, making it a great choice for promoting sleep.

Here are a few examples of Reiki music that can be used to promote sleep:

“Reiki Sleep Music”: This album features soft and calming music that is designed to help individuals fall asleep.

“Reiki Healing Sleep Music”: This album features soft and repetitive music that is designed to help individuals fall asleep.

“Reiki for Deep Sleep”: This album features guided Reiki meditations and soft music that is designed to help individuals fall asleep.

“Reiki Relaxation Music”: This album features soft and calming music that is designed to help individuals relax and fall asleep.

“Reiki Healing Sounds”: This album features soft and repetitive music that is designed to help individuals fall asleep and be relaxed.

8. Instrumental Music to Sleep

Soft instrumental music, such as piano, flute, or guitar music, can be calming and help to create a peaceful environment for sleep.

9. Sounds of Silence for Sleep

For some people, complete silence can be the best background for sleep, allowing them to focus on their breathing and relax. This is also called Black noise.

10. Tai Chi Music for Sleep

What is Tai Chi? Tai Chi is a traditional Chinese system of exercise and movement meditation. The gentle, slow movements facilitated by deep breathing make it a great way to reduce stress and tension while improving overall balance and flexibility.

It’s a type of martial art but has become more popular for its health benefits, such as increased circulation, improved posture, enhanced joint stability, and better balance.

Taichi music is often designed to reflect these principles. The slow and repetitive rhythm of tai chi music can help slow down the heart rate and reduce anxiety, making it easier to fall asleep.

11. Slow and Soft Rock Sleep Music

Some people find that slow and soft rock music can be calming and help them fall asleep.

Soft rock music that features slow tempos, gentle instrumentation, and soothing vocals can be a good choice for bedtime music. The repetitive and consistent rhythm of slow and soft rock music can help create a peaceful and calming atmosphere, making it easier to fall asleep.

Here are some examples of slow and soft rock music that can help promote sleep:

“Every Breath You Take” by The Police

“Wonderwall” by Oasis

“Something” by The Beatles

“Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M.

“Patience” by Guns N’ Roses

“Black” by Pearl Jam

“Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac

“Come As You Are” by Nirvana

“The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel

“Breathe Me” by Sia

12. Soft Jazz Music for Sleeping

Some people find that soft jazz music, with its relaxed and smooth melodies, can be calming and help them fall asleep.

Soft jazz music can be a great choice for promoting sleep, as it is often slow and relaxing. Jazz music is known for its smooth and melodic sound, and the soft and gentle instrumental arrangements can create a calming and peaceful atmosphere, making it easier to fall asleep.

Here are some examples of soft jazz music that can help promote sleep:

“Take Five” by Dave Brubeck

“Dream a Little Dream of Me” by Louis Armstrong

“Round Midnight” by Thelonious Monk

“Misty” by Erroll Garner

“In a Sentimental Mood” by Duke Ellington

“Body and Soul” by Coleman Hawkins

“Stella by Starlight” by Nat King Cole

“My Funny Valentine” by Chet Baker

“Blue in Green” by Miles Davis

“Moon River” by Henry Mancini

It’s important to remember that everyone’s sleep needs and preferences are different, so it may take some experimentation to find the type of music that works best for you.

Additionally, you can try listening to playlists specifically curated for sleep or relaxation, as these can be a great resource for finding music that works for you.

There is plenty of sleep kinds of music available online, especially on Youtube, try different types of music to find what works best for you.

https://palsbuys.com/music-which-makes-you-sleep/

[tillerman1]

TO JOY

by Ingmar Bergman translated unimpeded by Google and SYSTRAN

The concert hall. The rehearsal of Beethoven's 9th symphony has just finished. Sönderby descends from the conductor's desk. The orchestra breaks up. Someone approaches Stig and says he has a phone. He goes out to the kiosk and answers, shouts hello several times, but only hears someone breathing heavily.

STIG: Hello. Hello.

Then he is gripped by worry, hangs up the phone, grabs his coat, hat and violin case and runs down the stairs. He walks very fast through the streets. It is a Scanian pre-spring day with heat in the sun and cold in the shade. A freight train makes its way cautiously and breathlessly across from the ferry to Central Station. A boat honks in the harbor. There are white geese out in the Sound. When Stig comes through the door at home, a tall old woman is sitting and waiting for him. She gets up –

GRANDMA: I'm Martha's grandmother. I called you at the Concert Hall but I couldn't speak. Now I have sat here and calmed down a bit.

Stig gets sick, can't say anything.

The old woman looks at him for a long time. She is very calm. Her voice betrays no emotion—

GRANDMA (after a pause): Your wife and your daughter Lisa are dead.

Stig claps his hands over his face and staggers, then he stands as if paralyzed -

GRANDMA: I wasn't inside when it happened. The distillery exploded. We heard the bang and came running. Martha sat on the floor with Lisa in her arms. She was conscious although she was badly burned. The little girl was already dead. Martha didn't want to let go of the baby despite that. I prayed to God to let Martha die too and He had mercy on her and took away her suffering. She died in the car to the hospital. Lasse knows nothing. He was with uncle Axel and was eating.

Stig doesn't answer, is still motionless –

GRANDMA: The Lord has struck you. You should humble your heart and seek peace with him. No one but him can help you now in your great distress.

STIG (low): Stop that.

GRANDMA (calmly): As you wish. Nevertheless, I have come to you to reason about burial and other practical details.

STIG (screaming cuttingly): Not now. Let me be alone. Go your way. Go so I don't have to see you!

The old obeys and approaches the door. There she turns, has a hint of contempt in her voice –

GRANDMOTHER: Tomorrow we must have a conversation anyway. Otherwise, I will be forced to act at my own discretion. I promise I will not talk to you any more about the divine things, as you seem to be tormented by it. I meant what I just said.

She walks away, leaving Stig alone. First he walks around for a while, then his knees buckle and he sinks to the floor but doesn't cry. The day grows silent and waning around him. It will be dark and still. The mist comes rolling in from the sea, and far away, as if through a dream, he hears the muffled cry of the mistlepers—

STIG: Now I can't live anymore. Now you can't live anymore. Martha … Martha Martha martha martha … Loved … loved …

He sees the doll with the long yellow hair. She lies where Lisa left her the day before. He can hear Lisa's laugh—

LISA: You can't go with grandma. You are to lie here and sleep under the sofa until I come back. Then you will be so happy. Now you should sleep.

Right next to his ear, next to the pounding of his heart, he senses her voice, questions, laughter. Over there sits the bear that lost its head but Martha sewed it back on. Now he always has his head on the side, poor thing. It's no longer the fogeys. It is a great harp tuning its strings. Time slips away... the room... Martha... The concert hall. Autumn's first rehearsal. The orchestra sits and tunes. It's a hell of a noise. Most people think it will be nice to start a new season, if nothing else for the sake of the more regular income. It is true that there is one or two sour pots who mostly look forward to retirement, but he disappears in the general friendly crowd. Then comes Sönderby, the conductor, the orchestra's director and leader. A very old man, rather small. (He is an immutable if somewhat dry interpreter of the great masters, burning with a not very strong but pure flame. Sometimes he blazes. Then he acquires dimensions. This orchestra is entirely his creation. He has many enemies and few friends. It is Sönderby, gnarled and scratched like a rune stone, an anti-romantic gentleman.) He steps up to the desk, blows his nose and opens the score.

SÖNDERBY: Today we start a new season. For my own part, I think it's nice. I don't know what you think. I have to welcome two new members to Hälsingborg's Orchestra Association. It's Stig Eriksson. After Sunken who died last summer. God rejoiced the soul.

Stig Eriksson looks down, turns a sheet of music and looks at the next page. (He is a shy person, looks like 23 but is 25, seems like a baby's butt.)

SÖNDERBY: Then we've got a female teacher in the orchestra. It's a little ridiculous and completely against nature, but she is helplessly gifted. Sitting over there, if you haven't seen them already. Her name is Martha.

He points with the baton towards the other violins, where Martha is sitting. Everyone is watching. However, Martha is less shy than Stig Eriksson. She looks back and looks very wise –

SÖNDERBY: You are welcome. The town is called the Pearl of the Sound. You'll probably find out how much of a gem it is in winter, when the foggers roam like a herd of cows trapped in a cargo pocket. It can get on your nerves. - Then we start -César Franck's First Symphony.

Sönderby raises his arms - silence - concentration. After six bars, he puts down the baton, takes off his glasses, cleans his nose. The orchestra stops playing and a gloomy mood spreads in the congregation -

SÖNDERBY: But gentlemen!He says this in a tone and expression that is unmistakable—

SÖNDERBY: Do I get the blows from the beginning.

The blowers play their part, stop.

SÖNDERBY: Now I get the strings. The strings play.

SÖNDERBY: Now we'll take it all - all of them!It sounds different. He sings along to himself, looking neither happy nor sad, but his face is still and pure like a craftsman bent over the toil of his hands. Rehearsal is over –

SÖNDERBY: It sounded silly today, but it's completely natural. Good dinner gentlemen and … the lady. On Thursday, Cortot will arrive. It will be music.Stig Eriksson packs up and heads out to the musicians' foyer -

MARTHA: Hi Stig. Good day. Imagine if we were to come here. How have you been this summer? Have you met anything with Postis? I have been abroad with my brother and heard a lot of music.

STIG (looking at his nose): Yeah.

MARTHA: You yourself then?

STIG: Summer Orchestra.

MARTHA: Poor thing!

STIG: It worked, except that Gold and Silver had not been composed.

MARTHA: Did you do any work then?

STIG: Yes, I have. I have worked in Mendelssohn you and then I have…

MARTHA: Why do you sound so angry?

STIG: … a couple of new nice things. Why would I sound angry? Got a place to live, huh?

MARTHA: Yes, by all means. And you?

STIG: Pure horror. But it's cheap.

MARTHA: It's my birthday. There will be a little celebration tonight, will you come?

STIG: Don't feel like it. Which ones will it be?

MARTHA: Let's see if you come.

STIG (embarrassed): Can you lend me a ten? It's so damn embarrassing to go and take an advance on the first day and I don't know anyone here on the construction site, so could you borrow[lend] it from[to] me, that would be great.

MARTHA: If you come tonight then.

STIG: It's blackmail. But if I can borrow twenty bucks, I promise to come.

MARTHA: Are you cut, too?

STIG: Shall I get a haircut too, what's the matter!

MARTHA: Then you're going to buy me a present for no more than one-fifty and then you're going to try to be happy and friendly and not yell and judge and behave like you always did before.

After these orders of conduct, Martha gives Stig Eriksson twenty kroner and leaves. Stig comes out of the barber, looking like a licked cat. He stands for a long time in front of a street mirror, staring at his revelation which he finds extraordinarily ludicrous and discordant. Now Marcel appears behind his back –

MARCEL (cheerfully): As for the matter?

STIG: I curse my fate.

MARCEL: You look unbelievably comical when you're freshly cut and water combed. Is it Martha who tricked you into that?

STIG: So you know her?

MARCEL: Of course. I've had it together with her almost all summer. And you?

STIG: Not at all. Only from Ackis.

MARCEL: She has an outstanding character, but she is colossally frivolous. Hot on love if you know what I mean.

STIG (disapproving): I didn't ask for any analysis.

MARCEL: She broke up with me in such a way that I almost fell in love with her and proposed to her.

STIG: Well?

MARCEL: I stopped myself at the last moment, but it was as close as only that one.

STIG: Yes. I'm not interested.

MARCEL: So you're not going to the party tonight?

STIG: Don't have time and don't want to.

MARCEL: You're coming Bergis. Take the violin with you and I'll take the violoncello and we'll make some music before we get drunk.

STIG: Hello.

MARCEL: Hello. They separate and Stig walks up towards Prästgatan. On the way there is a toy store. He stops and looks in the window, there is a toy train, an electric one that whizzes around and stops, signals light up and another train starts. He enters the store, looks around. A person comes and asks what he wishes –

STIG: I want something for one and fifty. A small yellow bear sits on a shelf. It has a melancholy expression on its face. Stig points to it –

PERSON: That one costs 4.80.

STIG: I'll take it anyway.

PERSON: Shall I wrap it?

STIG: No, I take him as he is.

The person takes the bear down from the shelf and places it in Stig's hand.

STIG: He looks nice and weird, I think.

PERSON (impersonal): Well, these little bears are really popular.

Stig gives the person a look and walks out of the toy store. Martha's apartment. When Stig arrives at the birthday party, he is already quite drunk. The celebration has reached far and everyone is loud. A gramophone plays unnoticed. Martha comes and opens and Stig fumbles with the coat –

STIG: I didn't intend to come, and really I can't understand why I have to sit here among a bunch of idiots. But you bought me, so now it must have happened.

MARTHA: Too bad you didn't come sooner, because now all the food is already eaten. Marcel ate your portion too, although I tried to stop him.

STIG: I can well imagine that.

The room is small and the cigarette smoke impenetrable. The lighting dimmed. Anker takes out his flute and starts playing. Everyone shuts up and listens. Anker sits on a table edge. His eyes are glistening, his face is sweaty. The music is interrupted by terrible signals on the doorbell and a large alarm breaks loose in the hall. A horde of people vaults in and fills the tambourine [hall] –

MIKAEL: It's just me. But before I had time to remove my make-up and change and get away from the theater, there were a few of us.

MARTHA: It was fun, but there's not much left.

MIKAEL (two liters): We have.

Everyone now walks in and greets a little here and there as it happens.

BERTIL: Stop with that damned nonsense.

HANS: And then he slammed his fist into the metal ramp and said: Stop with that damned nonsense!

All the actors laugh so that they squirm, but the others who are not initiated sit like question marks. Anker is also gloomy because he didn't get to finish playing. Mikael Bro approaches Stig –

MIKAEL: It's a story, you see. It's actually quite funny. I will tell it to you sometime when we have more time.

Someone spends a living for the birthday child. Stig gets a glass of brandy and everyone cheers, after which they drink. In pure confusion, Stig overturns everything and is hit as if by a club blow. He sees a woman's body and a rectangle of light. It's the kitchen and Martha is in the kitchen. He staggers towards the bright rectangle, grabs the girl, tries to kiss her—

MARTHA: Leave it to me now and don't be stupid.

She makes herself free without unkindness. He turns and sees Marcel, who is standing right next to him, grinning with a cello in his fist -

STIG: What are you grinning at?

MARCEL: At you, of course.

STIG: You can get hell for that. But since you're drunk, I don't want to hurt you.

He starts waving his arms, everyone talks to each other, the gramophone starts. Marcel and Martha dance. Stig ends up on a sofa, where the actor Bertil sits –

BERTIL: I'm huge when I'm on stage. It is RADIATION.

Stig stares at him. He is huge. The music is pounding –

BERTIL: When I get caught, you see, I'm like a tank. I play so they can weld me off the stage floor after the show.

Then the evil one led Satan into Stig. He steps up and makes a long speech—

STIG (in a booming voice): It could happen. But have you heard me play the violin then? I can tell you that all world famous violin masters are charlatans and they live on routine and variety tricks. But I see through their tricks and arts. Because you see the secret of real art is that it is created when you are unhappy and you see I prefer to be unhappy and the gods know that I probably find myself in that predicament most of the time. And I'll show all the bastards what it means to play the violin.

Here he breaks off - his voice breaks - and he slams his fist on the table so that glasses and bottles jump and stares at the assembled with red-rimmed eyes. And when he notices that by using his enormous vocal resources he has created silence and foreboding, he takes the opportunity to add an extra coal -

STIG: Now you all sit there and have a bad conscience - I know what you're thinking, me: Are we artists who only think about supa[booze] and women's hours and pension. I'm drunk myself, I know that. I admit that, because it is a slip. And if I wasn't drunk, I wouldn't dare say a single smack. But now I can say that I have at least seen through both you and myself for that matter. And I say: Just remove it, remove it! Because it is nothing to have. But I'm going to fucking die and get up again and then I'm going to let you hear violin playing. Because humility is what it comes down to, remember, you ghastly slashers, who sit there whizzing in the ball and drool and belch with stained ties.

Here he hits the table again, but the table is too small or maybe it has moved, so the hand hits the open air, whereupon Stig Eriksson ends up on the floor. There he begins to cry, partly from the pain, partly because the floor is rocking and partly from pure self-pity -

MIKAEL (leaning over him): Have a cigarette. Here you have fire. Say yes, now smoke calmly and stop crying. This is the first press. Hang on kid, it gets a lot worse, but I won't scare you.

MARTHA: How are you?

STIG: Oh, you can hear it going all the way into the evening song, huh!

MARTHA: Shame on you! By the way, where have you been to get your hair cut? You look like a scalded pig.

STIG: It's your fault.

Then she laughs and disappears in the now denser tobacco smoke. Stig sits up and holds his hands over his head, then he feels bad and staggers up. Someone takes him to the bathroom, turns on the light and closes the door. Relieved, he opens it and stares out into the room. The piano plays jazz, people sing. He hears a girl laughing incessantly and glimpses dancing couples. A table lamp has been placed on the floor, it will be full of shadows on the ceiling and on the walls. They caress each other out of order. Stig becomes so despondent and alone in despair at the sight of all this and at his own drunkenness that he bangs his head on the doorpost so that it rattles. The tears are flowing, but now he is crying out of real terror and loneliness –

STIG: I can't understand who I am and why I can't be like a decent human being even though I'm talented - because I am. I am very talented, although I am drunk.Then he feels dizzy and finds himself forced to curl up in the tub with his hands over his eyes. The last thing he sees before he loses consciousness is Mikael Bro's sweaty face leaning over him and breathing on him –

MIKAEL: Have you met my wife Nelly? I assure you it is an acquaintance to make. A funny little animal with a mouth like a red flower. I want to take you home and leave you as a gift to her. She would appreciate that.But then Stig has already definitely collapsed. He wakes up in the middle of the blackness and screams into the sky, trying to protect himself with his arms. However, it is too late, the ceiling falls soundlessly on him and crushes him.

He feels someone grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Then he really wakes up and finds partly that he is lying on a sofa in a strange room and partly that he is terribly ill. It's Martha sitting there shaking him—

MARTHA: Why are you screaming?

STIG: Well, the roof fell down. But now I see that it was just the white curtain. I have to sit up. I am definitely terribly sick.

MARTHA: You took it a little fiercely.

STIG: What time is it and where am I?

MARTHA: It's five o'clock and you're at my house.

STIG: Why then?

MARTHA: You couldn't be transported.

She pats his hand and smiles. Her eyes and teeth shine. Stig discovers that she is only wearing a nightgown and despite being very tired he tries to embrace and kiss her –

MARTHA: No, but please Stig, don't argue now.

STIG: It's probably you who's causing trouble.

MARTHA: If you don't keep calm, you'll have to go to the corner of your eye.Then Stig reveals his seduction attempts -

STIG (with deep self-pity): I'm terribly ridiculous.

MARTHA: You are.

STIG: People like me shouldn't be allowed to live.

MARTHA: By all means. You don't do any for when. But you probably could have bought me a birthday present, when I asked you so beautifully.

STIG (triumphant): I have!

MARTHA: Have you? But of course you forgot it at home.

STIG: No. No no. Wait. Where is my coat somewhere?He gets up and staggers around the room, finds the jacket, digs in all the pockets. Martha looks on and looks very incredulous—

STIG (screaming): Here it is! You might think it's silly, but it was the only thing I could come up with.But Martha is really caught. She gets so caught up that she can't bring herself to say anything at all. She just takes the bear and places it on the arm of the couch and looks at it. Stig sits down next to her and she has her head turned away and he will look at her neck. It's a girl's neck and the neck is fluffy smooth. She turns her face to his and looks at him seriously—

MARTHA: Thank you, Stig. It was a very nice birthday present. But now you should lie down and sleep because we have a rehearsal at nine o'clock.Stig obeys. Martha paws away to her bed, yawns a little. They lie silent and look out into the rising dawn light. The white curtain bulges in the open window. The bear's eyes look unfathomable, he sits there and looks at Stig.

STIG: It may happen that you behave crazy and ridiculous, but the main thing is that you WANT to become a real person and artist.

MARTHA: Good night now.

STIG: Yes, but you agree with that, right?

MARTHA: Yes, I do. Good night.

STIG: Good night.

It has seriously become autumn. But this is a Sunday with sun that is still warm, but it is windy and in the shade it is bitterly cold. Martha and Stig are sitting by the sea. Stig occasionally throws a stone into the water –

STIG: Sönderby is a nice guy, you know that now, after working with him for over a month.

MARTHA: He's a little dry.

STIG: It doesn't matter.

MARTHA: Would you like to be like him then?

STIG: He has done a lot of good and I would like that too.

MARTHA: You have time.

STIG: I'm 25 and when you're that old you should have become something - something with responsibility.

MARTHA: Think I'm satisfied.

STIG: Would like to start a string quartet, one that is really nice and exclusive and that tours all over the world. We would be the best.

MARTHA (smiling): It's clear.

STIG: You have a particular way of grinning that I don't like.

MARTHA: I feel friendly only, it's the whole five.

STIG: You then? What kind of one are you? What do you want then?

MARTHA: Nothing.

Martha shrugs and darkens a little. She begins to dig a pit among the pebbles –

MARTHA: I'd like to bury myself deep down, so nothing came to me.

STIG (doubtful): You're not unhappy, are you?

MARTHA: Some have an unnaturally happy outlook.

STIG: When I think about it, we only talked about me when we met. I don't know a thing about you.

MARTHA: It's more fun for both you and me.

STIG: Don't talk grease now.

MARTHA: Do you care one bit about me?All of a sudden her eyes are completely black. Stig looks at her and gets a little confused -

STIG: What do you mean?

MARTHA: You've wanted to go to bed with me now for a month and you haven't had it. But if you were allowed to sleep with me, would you care the least bit about me? Answer honestly! You don't have to be afraid of hurting me. - There you see! You can't answer!

STIG (a little grumpy): I guess I'll have to think about it first. It is clear that one has pondered why you have been so troublesome and made so much trouble. But we actually had quite a bit of fun anyway.

MARTHA: You're not answering my question.

STIG: I understand exactly, even if you think I'm an idiot. You want insurance that I love you, as they say in the movies, otherwise you'll have moral convulsions and that's the worst thing a woman knows.

MARTHA: Damn you stupid!

STIG (heated): Yes, then speak so that people understand!

MARTHA: I want us to stay together.

She says this in a completely naked way and her eyes are wide open and Stig can for a moment (despite the fact that he is only a child's butt) see straight into her heart and he understands a little bit of another person's loneliness and leads. He is both surprised and caught -

STIG: Forgive me. You talk so much here and there and you almost never think that it is a human being you are talking to.

MARTHA: There's been so much misery, you see. So much laxity and indifference both with body and soul. In the end, you don't care about anything. You think it should be that way, that it's the whole point.

STIG: There doesn't need to be any meaning, does it?

MARTHA (passionately): Well, it must. And if there isn't one, you have to invent one, otherwise you can't live.

She turns her head away and repeatedly hits the ground with a rock. She is very upset and serious. Stig becomes completely silent –

MARTHA: I've been married. Yes, you know that. But it was just cheating. I've cheated at my job too, been a little bit gifted like that. Practically everything I've done has been cheating. All my life.

STIG (slightly dull): I don't believe that.

MARTHA: That's easy to say. But now I don't want this between you and me to turn into cheating too. It can be either or. - Did you get scared now?

STIG: You can take things too seriously too.

Then Martha turns around and laughs. Her laugh is very loud and it sounds quite happy –

MARTHA: For you, this will be just a play on words.

STIG: It's clear that I want to stick with you, you've noticed that. You can't keep talking about love and marriage at every turn, either.

MARTHA: I promise I'll be as kind as I can to you.

STIG: We're not going to make any promises.

MARTHA: We can promise each other to be honest. I think it is absolutely necessary.

STIG: And then we won't bark.

MARTHA: No. And if you get tired or I get tired, we say and don't go and are considerate.

STIG: You will be the one who gets tired.

MARTHA (laughing): You don't believe it yourself. We must have no illusions. It will be difficult many times. More difficult than what you can sit and calculate like this on a sober caliber.

STIG (laughing): Now we stop.

MARTHA: Do you know what we do. Now we go home and move your things home to me. It will be more practical and cheaper too.

STIG: That's nice. I hate my room. And I was going to get rheumatism there this winter. But from next month we will share the rent.

Martha smiles at him and narrows her eyes. Stig thinks he has made a nice deal and right now Martha is cute. He strokes her cheek and neck with the wrong side of his hand. Then they will start kissing and it will be very hot, something they note with satisfaction –

MARTHA: I promise you won't have to lie on that uncomfortable couch, unless you really want to, of course.

The concert hall. Now hell is loose in the orchestra. Sonderby too. Hair standing like brush, glasses on forehead, sweaty, furious, stomping. Two broken batons. The Overture to the Bride Purchase –

SÖNDERBY: What did you have for yourself during Christmas? Oh this sacrament-damaged city where it is only eaten and eaten! Hay bags! Did you hear what I said?

MARCEL: Yes, but this is difficult, among the most difficult there is.

SÖNDERBY: There is nothing that is difficult for someone who is talented. But there are lath dogs and wooden skulls. Take over from B! Everyone! Stop!

Sönderby throws the baton right into the orchestra so it stands like a springboard -

SÖNDERBY: It's one of the other violins playing out of tune. Get to hear Persson! Persson alone from B as in Bertil. Go ahead, tell me!

Persson plays with death in his heart, quits. There will be a terrible silence. Sönderby takes off his glasses –

SÖNDERBY (tired): Persson plays with an untuned C string.

PERSSON: If it's going to be so damn thorough, I can stop.

Then Sönderby looks at Persson, who with pitiful rubbing and twisting begins to unscrew his C-string. Martha sits next to Persson. She looks sick and miserable—

SÖNDERBY: I can't bear to hear this horrible cat whining. We take a ten minute break, during which time Persson should think about his life and ask himself if he hasn't messed it up. Pause.

Martha and Stig get up at the same time, Martha, however, a little wobbly. They exchange a look. Sönderby heads straight up to the conductor's room. Martha and Stig follow and knock on the door. They have an extremely important matter. Sönderby growls something that can represent everything between Stig in and Drag to Hell –

STIG: We have to ask for time off.

SÖNDERBY: Aren't you really smart?

STIG: You promised last week that we would be allowed to go before one and now she is half past two.

SÖNDERBY: Yes, but then I didn't know you were so untalented.

STIG: Yes, in any case, we have to go.

SÖNDERBY: Yes.Sönderby lights a large cigar to calm himself down. He is extremely unmerciful—

MARTHA: We're getting married at half past three.Then Sönderby drops the cigar. He even slaps his forehead –

SÖNDERBY: Jeez, I forgot that! I think I should retire and quit. Looks like it's about time. I would…

STIG: You were supposed to be a witness, yes.

SÖNDERBY: Yes, it was magnificent! Now I see no other advice than to call the mayor and postpone the wedding.

STIG: Then you are not wise! Do you think people shoot at a wedding without valid reasons!

SÖNDERBY: Do you think a rehearsal is interrupted without valid reasons?

STIG: Wedding was a valid reason even during the war.

SÖNDERBY: This is not a military unit.

STIG: Sometimes it seems like a concentration camp, I think.

SÖNDERBY: If you're rude, we'll rehearse all day!

STIG: Not with me and Martha anyway.

SÖNDERBY: In that case, it will be the end of the lordship, at least in my orchestra.

STIG: We make an art in your orchestra!

SÖNDERBY: You didn't get enough lubrication in your childhood.

STIG: And you start to be a child again.

SÖNDERBY (screaming): Go to hell!

STIG: I don't want to be in the same place as you.

SÖNDERBY: You know I can't get this angry. You are ruthless and ungrateful and I could have a heart attack and die.

STIG: That would be quite nice, at least you don't prevent honest people from getting married.

SÖNDERBY: There you can see the consequences of bringing women's hours into the orchestra!

Then Martha faints. Sönderby gets a little startled and looks around rather anxiously –

SÖNDERBY: No, but what happened to her now?

MARTHA: Nothing at all. I'm just very tired. She sits down in a chair and looks like she's going to pass out again.

SÖNDERBY: You only play theater. All women roar to get their way. They already did that in my time. Nevertheless, he goes to the desk and orders a taxi –

STIG: Will you come yourself then? Don't forget it's half past three.

SÖNDERBY: I am defeated by unfair methods. But I will note it.

When they get home, it becomes a trap. Stig is under the bed looking for a collar button. Martha goes into the kitchen and sets the table for a full machine, because there will be a small party afterwards -

MARTHA: Have you looked in the toolbox?

STIG: Yes, I have and in your jewel box and headache bag.

MARTHA: Then run out and buy one.

STIG: Yes, but it's the fact that a thing just disappears like that without further ado. Are you sure you haven't seen it anywhere?

MARTHA: What did you say? I don't have time now honey.

STIG: Where are you?

MARTHA: I'll come now. Here I am.

She comes over to him and sits down next to him. For a moment the panic passes –

MARTHA (sighing): Oh, we're in such a hurry.

STIG (inconsolable): This getting married is both a time-consuming and enervating procedure, admit it.

MARTHA: Do you regret it?

STIG: If I'm being honest, I can say that I'm terribly sorry right now.

MARTHA: Me too. Such ideas you get sometimes.

STIG: We're calling rebids.

MARTHA: Now? When we have made such a huge life to get away! What do you think Sönderby would say then?

STIG (approvingly): At least you treated him well.

MARTHA: What do you mean, darling?

STIG: I mean the fainting thing. It definitely broke him.

MARTHA (a little gloomily): It must have been genuine.

STIG (laughing): Don't try me. It was pure amateur theatre. Martha gets up after taking off her stockings—

MARTHA: Well, you'll see.

STIG: Did you really feel fat?

MARTHA: Think I did. Now she stands on her head in the sock box -

STIG: Why then?

MARTHA: It's not so strange, is it? I'm with children, you understand. Stig becomes completely silent. Martha patterns a pair of socks and finds that they do. She sits down on a chair to put them on—

MARTHA: You don't seem very enthusiastic, I think. By all means, you don't need to either.

STIG: But how the hell did it happen?

MARTHA: I suppose quite in the usual way.

STIG: Don't be funny, because you're not.

MARTHA: That was a stupid answer to a stupid question.

STIG: Have you known this for a long time?

MARTHA (belligerent): Yes, I have. Almost three months now. Dress me if you feel like it.

STIG: But why in the name of peace haven't you said anything?

MARTHA: Because this kid I want, you understand.

STIG: You get kids whether you want them or not.

MARTHA: You really are naive.

STIG: Do you mean that…

MARTHA: Yes, think so, I mean.

STIG: You never said that.

MARTHA: Would it have made a difference?

STIG: If you have had an abortion before, you can do it again.

MARTHA: No you.

STIG: I think the whole thing is disgusting.

MARTHA (screaming): What's so disgusting? Now she suddenly becomes absolutely furious in her eyes -

STIG: That you've actually been carrying a kid behind my back for three months. How the hell am I supposed to know it's my kid, huh?

Then he gets an ear file –

STIG (angrily): By the way, we can't afford to have any children. And no place either. In this small room. Diapers and pee smell and breastfeeding and childcare centers and baby baskets and babysitters and hell and your grandma. And think of all the shouting and noise and where am I going to practice anywhere? No thanks, I thank you for that fatherly joy. And how did you actually intend to arrange the whole thing? At some point you would have had to tell me about it, right? Or had you perhaps intended to come home and say one day: Go ahead little daddy, here I have made a kid for you.

It gets quiet – awfully quiet. Martha just sits there, stroking her thighs. She looks very pissed off –

STIG: Well?

MARTHA: Maybe I should apologize?

STIG: You certainly don't understand this. I don't want any kid. I loathe children. And by the way, do you think this is some wider world to spawn in? I prefer to die out myself.It's quiet again -

STIG (somewhat conciliatory): Why don't you say anything?

MARTHA (decisively): I'm listening to you and I can see that you have no idea what you're talking about, but are talking about pure slush. (pause) As usual.

STIG: What do you want me to do? Shall I hold you in my arms and start talking about the guy becoming prime minister.

MARTHA: I wish you would just once speak and act like a man.

STIG (ironically): A man of steel perhaps?

MARTHA: A simple and natural fellow.

STIG: Now she accuses me of not being a man.Thus he appeals to an invisible auditorium -

MARTHA: I knew you were a child, and that you were neurotic and selfish, too. But I didn't know that you are cruel and raw.

STIG: It was the worst.

MARTHA (sadly): But it was well I discovered that thing before we were married, for now there shall be no marriage.

STIG (horrified): No way, we can't call back NOW!

MARTHA (smiling): Think they say women are so conventional!

STIG (shaken): Yes, but what will THEN become of everything?

MARTHA: Now I'll go down to the tobacco shop and call. I mean because you don't dare. Then you can stay here as long as you like. Still, I have never considered you anything other than a compliance.

STIG: You're crazy—absolutely crazy!

She has been busy with her bag. Now she goes out into the tambourine and puts on her hat and coat. She wipes herself and rubs her hand over her eyes. Stig discovers that she is crying. Martha is crying! He goes out into the tambour and puts his hand over the door lock –

STIG: Why are you crying? I've never seen you cry. Are you sad?

MARTHA: No, but I'm tired. On you.She bends her head down and runs her hand over her eyes once more –

STIG (low): Have I ruined everything now?

MARTHA: Uh, what's that talk!

STIG: Then why are you crying? You know what I'm like.

MARTHA: I'm howling because I'm pissed off that I'm howling. If I wasn't so withered, I wouldn't howl.

STIG: Maybe you thought I'd be happy?

MARTHA: Deep down, I knew it would be just like this. But it is clear that I imagined a lot of things. I don't know, maybe it belongs.

STIG: Did you do it last time too?

MARTHA: Then everything was wrong. There was no room for imagination then.

STIG: But you mean that now…

MARTHA (lowly): I still thought this with us was something else. Although I should have understood that nothing changes. Everything is always the same, even the words you say it with.

STIG: Damn, I love you.

He says this completely without thinking and much more sincerely than directly romantically. But he would never have said that, because now all the dams in Martha are loosening and she is crying so hard that it pours over her. Thereupon, an angel descends from heaven and hands the confused Stig a series of inspired sentences, which he takes care to wedge into suitable places between Martha's bursts of crying -

STIG: You see, I've never liked SURPRISES. I remember that even when I was very small I only got scared and angry when people surprised me - even if it was something fun. I think it was the same this time. I must say you could have chosen a more appropriate time. And then when I think about it, you get some child support now. It's fine as pork it. We can let the kid support us almost! And you (triumphant tone) they can't jock you out of the orchestra because you're in the thick of it. It doesn't work nowadays. You know Putte's sister, who sits in the Konsertföreningen, she is on the beat practically all the time and she sits there and fiddles with her stomach in the air - I've seen it like that myself - and then when she can't get the violin to her chin anymore because her stomach is stuck away, I remember that she gets half pay. And it is clear that you can change floors if that is the case.

Here the inspiration runs, but now Martha's tears have dried up and practical sense is starting to work its way out of the black bag of despair -

MARTHA (kindly and anxiously): How much you talk!

STIG: This thing about surprises is true in any case, and it's also psychologically believable.

MARTHA: Think what I look like. And my nose which always doubles in size when I've licked.

She takes off her hat and lets it fall to the floor. She sits on a chair opposite the mirror in the hall and examines her bloated face. Stig rises from the floor –

STIG: Say what you will, this will be a wedding that both you and I will remember. Martha stands up and embraces him fiercely. They stand for so long and hold each other. Both close their eyes and are quite solemn –

STIG: And actually a Liljeholmens has dawned on me. I mean before, I used to think that you should absolutely just love yourself, but oh my god you get older and you mature and learn things.

Since it's raining, they don't get a car, so they hold hands and run as fast as the cloth will hold, but still arrive five minutes late. The ceremony itself is nevertheless beautiful and perhaps it is the joy in general or the condition that makes Martha's eyes grow very large despite the crying an hour before and the skin seems so transparent and the lips so soft. Or maybe it's just something that Stig thinks. In the evening after dinner, Anker and Sönderby stay and the four of them play Mozart together in such a way that Sönderby plays his old viola and Anker has borrowed a cello. They light candles at the music stands and it has stopped raining and that night there is a full moon. The white glow almost dominates the lights, but then the moon also stands right in the middle of the window, shining on the Sound and the city, and everything suddenly becomes a dream and magic. They are alone now. Martha and Stig sit for a long time by the window with their faces pressed against the pane. They don't say very much but they kiss each other from time to time and like two amazed children they discover how the ice flowers break out on the window glass -

STIG: He might become prime minister. At least if he turns out to be like you.

There is something in the window, glimmering mysteriously, almost like a diamond. It's the collar button –

MARTHA: We'll save it. As a memory.The conductor's room.

Sönderby walks back and forth on the floor and smokes. Stig sits on the edge of a table and dangles his legs, arms crossed –

SÖNDERBY: So we have 14 dates and have gone through the concert twice, you and I. As far as I understand, you should be able to handle the matter helpfully.

STIG: Sure.

SÖNDERBY (sternly): You say yes, but I know what you're thinking. What does your wife say?

STIG: Nothing.

SÖNDERBY: It was worrying.

STIG: What you're both trying to do is knock me down in the shoes and you might succeed in that with one tu three.

SÖNDERBY: To be honest, I would have preferred to avoid this gamble. But what to do when a visiting violin virtuoso suddenly dies and messes up the whole master plan.

STIG: You consider the matter settled. What are you staring at anyway?

SÖNDERBY: I'll tell you that. I stand and stare at the little bastard of ambition, who sits and waves in your eyes.

STIG: Even then! Is it so strange?

SÖNDERBY: No, it's not the least bit strange. But you have been in my orchestra for half a year and you have not discovered that music is an end and not a means.

Then he pats him on the cheek and with that the conversation is over and they go down to the rehearsal. Martha is waiting on the stairs. Söndery leaves husband and wife alone to ponder the situation together. Martha is in her sixth month and has quite a big belly. She no longer plays in the orchestra -

MARTHA: Well, what did he say?

STIG: It worked out.

They start going down the stairs together. Stig is so happy that his whole body trembles. They stop at a staircase window and stand looking down on the street, hanging out over the banister.

STIG: Now I have my chance. Now I'm going to show them how to play the violin. Then anything can happen here, you understand, my little Chubby. You might get to come to Stockholm. You practically never know what might happen. Think, it's a fantastic feeling to have everything spread out in front of you! Not knowing any limits!He gently rubs his cheek against hers, and discovers that Martha hasn't said anything the entire time. He gets a little shocked but hides it and pokes her –

STIG: Why don't you say anything? You're happy, aren't you? This applies to you as much as to me.

MARTHA: Of course I'm happy.

STIG: You just think it's going to hell.

MARTHA: I think it's so terrible that you charge everything in advance, as it were.

STIG: That's good. No one believes me. But I'll show you all—you, too.

MARTHA: I know you're very talented. That's what everyone says. They even say it a little too fondly. Now I go home and make lunch. You'll be home for lunch, right?

STIG: I'll be home for lunch. Hope I get black pudding with jam.

Stig kisses her on the mouth, rushes down the stairs. Martha begins to descend heavily and carefully. She hears the first bars of the violin concerto. She doesn't look very happy. The audience gives a friendly welcome applause when Stig enters together with Sönderby. Sönderby steps onto the desk and strokes his face. He waits until Stig has tuned and fine-tuned together with the first concertmaster. Then he waits out the rustling, coughing and whispering. Martha has positioned herself to the side of the podium up in the scrub, where the radio guys usually stay. From that place she has a nice view of the orchestra and Stig's activities up there at the conductor's desk. The movement ends with a cadenza. Suddenly the G-string starts to drop. In a few moments it has dropped almost half a ton. Stig loses his composure, first tries to play on, then takes a wild gamble and transposes. Sönderby is completely powerless. Martha bites her fingers. Finally, Stig interrupts himself and starts tuning the violin. He tunes the G string and stands for a moment, testing it next to his ear. In the hall it is soundlessly quiet. Sönderby's arms hang tiredly along the sides. So Stig takes over the solo cadenza from the beginning. As if in a nightmare and purely mechanically, he makes it through. The orchestra immediately continues with the andante and by then he is drenched in sweat and looks almost passed out. Martha can't sit still any longer. She wanders back and forth in the little scrub, whispering to herself. Sweep. The applause after the concert is friendly but not overwhelming. When Stig comes out of the stage, Martha sees a new and different face, an embittered, clenched, almost old one, full of sadness and suppressed rage. The applause continues. Sonderby comes out. He is also quite pale but perfectly in control -

SÖNDERBY: Come!

STIG (furiously): I'm not going back in. I'm not going in! I'm not going in! I'm not a jerk!

SÖNDERBY: You go in! You go in, even if it's the last thing you do! It's not about you now, remember that!

He says this with such a commanding calm that Stig automatically obeys him. A caretaker arrives with flowers. It is from the board, from the peers and from Martha. It's the bitter brew at the bottom. When Stig finally comes out, he furiously throws the flowers against the wall and begins to put on his hat and coat. Martha packs the violin. Nobody says anything.

SÖNDERBY: The rehearsal is not until 10 tomorrow, yes you know that.

With that he takes his hat and leaves. Stig sits down on a chair and claps his hands together. He is pale and dull but furious—

STIG: Damn scoundrel! Such a bloody scoundrel! Now he is happy, of course!

MARTHA: Come on, we'll go home and have a drink. We may both need that.

STIG: Uh!

MARTHA: Well, come on. In any case, we can't sit here.

STIG: He's a bloody scoundrel! A mean potty! A damn mean potty!

Martha doesn't answer but just stands next to her husband and waits. Marcel comes forward and pats Stig on the back –

MARCEL: That went beyond all expectations.

He laughs, thumps Stig in the back once more just in case. Stig does not respond, does not move -

MARTHA: Hear you go as far as the road goes, eh!

Marcel loses his face slightly, shrugs his shoulders and walks away without another word.

That night they sit in bed together playing cards, smoking and drinking gin. When the newspaper rattles in the mailbox just at dawn, Stig goes out and picks it up and hands it to Martha. Then he sits a little apart in the rocking chair -

STIG: You read! You better read!

Martha looks for a long time in the newspaper, flips back and forth. Finally she finds the review and reads silently –

STIG: Read aloud.

MARTHA: There's not much written there.

STIG: Read what it says.

MARTHA (reading): Stig Eriksson was too early in Mendelssohn's violin concerto. It is surprising that a wise old conductor like Sönderby did not put an end to this rather unnecessary suicide. It is possible that Eriksson is talented, after all, according to what is stated in the program notice, he has the most solid school.

STIG: More then?

MARTHA: It says nothing more.

STIG: Doesn't it say anything else?

MARTHA: No.

STIG: Was it SO bad!

Martha does not answer this. Stig presses his palms together so that they crack, he chews his lips to keep from crying, the tears are stuck in his eyelashes and he feels that he is being bent by a huge pressure. He looks at a spot straight in front of him –

STIG: I'm sure you're happy now.

Martha doesn't answer—

STIG: Both you and Sönderby.

Martha turns her head away—

STIG: Think how everyone will laugh.

Martha gets out of bed heavily –

STIG: Where are you going?

MARTHA: I was going to make some coffee.

STIG: I don't want anything.

MARTHA: No, but I do.

STIG (loudly): Of course you think this is the same shit.

Martha still doesn't answer. She rattles the coffee pot in the kitchen. Stig remains. He just squeezes his hands together over and over. Martha comes back in, pulls up the blind and opens the window –

STIG: Close the window. I'm freezing.

MARTHA: I feel a little fat. Just going to take a breath of air.

STIG: Why don't you say anything?

MARTHA: But Stig, what do you want me to say? Should I say that the concert went well, that it is a lie in the paper, that everyone is wrong but you are right? Shall I comfort you, do you want it? Should I say that next time will be better?

STIG: There won't be one next time - you know that as well as I do.

Martha closes the window and goes into the kitchen to get the coffee pot –

MARTHA: If I were like you, I'd still be happy about one thing.

STIG: So what if I may ask?

MARTHA: Well, that I would be allowed to go to the rehearsal today at ten o'clock and sit as usual in my usual place and do my job.

STIG (contemptuously): That shows how little you understand! Now I'm going out for a walk anyway. Alone.

Then Martha quickly walks up to him and pulls him down on the edge of the bed, takes his head and presses it against her stomach -

MARTHA: May I go with you? Please Stig, may I join. But he hardens and pulls away.

STIG: I said I wanted to go alone. I don't want to go and pull a whole freight train.Martha swallows, decides to pretend she hadn't heard, and touches his shoulder—

MARTHA: At least you're going to the rehearsal.

STIG: I can see that and it doesn't concern you.

MARTHA (gravely): You wouldn't run me off like this.

STIG (viciously): There's so much I wouldn't say.

MARTHA: It's better if there are two of you about it. I am sure of that.

STIG: There are never two of you. Deep down you are always alone. What you say is just talk and a hell of a lot of sentimentality. No, I'm alone. Just like I've always been. And there is nothing more to it. Hello Hello. Martha can't bear to answer. She is just as dry and dead inside, sitting there heavy and a little rumpled with her hair around her face, pale from the night's vigil, her feet are bare and a little swollen -

MARTHA: Why are you so afraid of me?

STIG: Scared? It was comical! I want to be left alone, that's the whole point.

And with that he goes, leaving his wife to her thoughts and general concerns about the future.

He walks and sits and walks again and the sun comes up and shines on the Core. For a long time he stands outside the Concert Hall and watches and really hates -

STIG (in a loud voice): Such a disgusting ugly house! A municipal shithouse! A warehouse, you could say. Some sort of pig breeding facility! Warehouse for the package!

He speaks loudly and gestures. Then he walks again and as he walks and sits and stands, he bumps into Mikael Bro, the old actor -

MIKAEL: Well, you're out and about.

STIG: You yourself then? You don't look too happy either.

MIKAEL: Sleepless.

STIG (a little mischievously): Maybe there's a role in the making? An act of creation.

MIKAEL: Not at all. I heard Mendelssohn yesterday and it was so nasty I didn't dare sleep on top of it.

STIG: It was nice of you to take it that way. You get it.

MIKAEL (laughter): You know yourself - the great silence.

STIG: Why are you laughing? Everyone laughs. Am I being comical in some way or is it a pure coincidence?

MIKAEL: Of course you're comical, because you're a failure. But come now, we'll go to my house and have a cup of coffee.

Mikael Bro's home. Nelly comes out of the dark bedroom and greets Stig.

MIKAEL: You know STIG, about whom I spoke so much. A very talented boy. He has had a great setback and now you and I must be kind to him.

NELLY: He's blushing.

MIKAEL: You're not going to embarrass our friend, but now you're going to sit here and talk to each other while I go in and put on my slippers.

Mikael takes Nelly around the waist, looks at Stig –

MIKAEL: Isn't she cute? By the way, cute is not the right word. She's… (laughs) But she's not nice, even though she's weird. But that's another story.

He releases her and goes into the bedchamber. Nelly sits down at the table, takes a cigarette, invites Stig to sit. Nelly looks at him for a long time –

NELLY: Mikael is like that, so I'm used to it, believe me. Sometimes he comes home with the most outlandish types. But it does not matter. I like people. Likes to talk. Mikael is so quiet by himself. Reads mostly and I like him for that. But it can be fun for me to have someone to talk to. Geez, this looks messy and trashy. Yes, you can't clean every day either.

MIKAEL: You never clean my heart.

Mikael has taken off his shoes and jacket and paws around the room, disappears into the kitchen –

NELLY: We pull down the blinds so you don't have to see the misery. Imagine once we were so untidy here that the Health Board came here and said we would have to move if we didn't improve.

MIKAEL (walking through the door): We had a boy at the time, you see, but he died later.

NELLY: He had puppies. And then he died.

MIKAEL: Probably in pure surprise.

Mikael sighs and lies down on one of the beds in the bedroom. Stig looks at Nelly. She starts biting her nails, kneels on a chair opposite Stig and leans over the table –

NELLY: Why are you so sad?

STIG: I had kind of hoped to be able to catch the moon.

MIKAEL: In a net.

NELLY: And it didn't want to?

STIG: No, just as I was about to pick it up, it wedged out and disappeared deep beneath me.

NELLY: Like a fish?

STIG: No, not like a fish. Like a lot of money.

NELLY: Oh, now I understand exactly. You are that kind of treasure hunter, who lies out on the great oceans and fishes for sunken planets.

STIG: Yes, you see, I had planned to buy a bomb for the moon and blow up a certain warehouse - including the package.

MIKAEL (laughing): Distemper, boy! Word diarrhea! Blow up and crash, slam your fist on the table and fucking embrace at every turn! Then it always ends with a pension and a medal for faithful service. It's the same thing all the time.

STIG: Shut up. I'm talking to your wife.

NELLY: Yes, can you believe I'm his wife.

MIKAEL: Touching, huh!

NELLY: It's not worth being married to an old pig like you.

They both laugh, but Stig gets up and is very tired in his arms, legs, head, hair, stomach, toes and all other members and limbs -

STIG: Now I have to go because I have a rehearsal at ten o'clock.

MIKAEL: Good morning my friend. Remember that you are always welcome here, no matter what state you are in.

Nelly has followed Stig into the hall and stands right next to him. Stig looks at her breasts and gets an irresistable urge to squeeze them, starts stroking her shoulders –

NELLY: Come back soon.

STIG: Never in my life.

NELLY: Then why not?

STIG: Because I dislike you.

NELLY: It doesn't seem that way.

STIG: Also, this is a shithole in more ways than one.

NELLY: Know shame!

STIG: The fact is that you have a nice body, but that's the end of it.

NELLY: It's not that small.

STIG: By the way, you seem completely nuts and if you think I'm sharing you with that old dirty lobster in there, you're wrong. It's not that bad and you're not at the bottom yet.

NELLY: Welcome back anyway. We can always talk. I mean about the moon and stuff.

STIG: Would be then.He opens the door. She rises on tiptoe and kisses his ear.

STIG: No, give a fuck about that.

When he comes down the street, he sees Martha. She stays far away as if she didn't want to scare him. He also stops but realizes the ridiculousness of running away. They meet about halfway.

MARTHA: I also took a walk. But really, I was probably mostly hoping that I would get hold of you. But now we can go our separate ways if you want.

STIG: Been at Mikael Bro's house for a while.

MARTHA: Yes.

She sticks her arm under Stig's and they start walking home side by side –

STIG: Do we need to talk more about this?

MARTHA: No, no. We shall never speak of it again.

STIG: Well, once further on. When you've gotten a little older, maybe and everything doesn't hurt so much.

MARTHA: Have you hurt yourself?

STIG: Have I?

He rubs his ear and looks at his fingers—

STIG: It's just lipstick, you see.

MARTHA: Well, in that way.

STIG: It was that strange bean that insisted she wanted to kiss me.

Martha looks a little surprised at her husband but says nothing and then they leave. There is a nightingale sitting in the big book outside Stig and Martha's window and it is singing so that it is about to break. It is a night in early June. From time to time the Town Hall clock strikes full and quarter strikes. The whole town is bathed in moonlight and nightingales. So sits a nightingale in the big book outside Stigs and Martha's window cum the singing so that it holds on to go asunder. It is a night in early June. In and then beats The Council House Bell full- and quarter-stroke. All the city bathed in moonlight and nightingale song. Martha paces back and forth in the room. Stig sleeps with his mouth open and small discreet snores. A car thunders past on the street. The night wind rustles in the trees, but all the while the nightingale sings unceasingly, persistently, triumphantly. When the pains kick in and she feels like she's going to explode, she goes into the bathroom and bites a large towel. Then she starts her walk again. Stig wakes up like a shot. He sits up in bed and turns on the lamp –

STIG: How is it?

MARTHA: Well, at least it's going to end now.

At the same moment, she disappears into the bathroom. Stig comes up and is after her –

STIG: Can I help you?

Martha shakes her head and bites the towel. Then it becomes calmer and she wipes the sweat from her forehead, sits down for a moment. Stig also feels shaky in his legs –

MARTHA (smiling): Are you scared?

STIG: Yes, I am. Are you?

MARTHA: Actually, I haven't had any further desire to feel. But somehow it's nice that it's finally over. Stig pats her on the cheek and smiles palely –

STIG: I'm glad I'm not the one to go.

MARTHA: I'm with you. Stig grows even paler –

STIG: I actually feel terribly bad. Aren't we better off now?

He goes in and lies straight on the bed, speaks in a weak voice and sighs deeply, Martha begins to trudge about again—

MARTHA: Not quite yet. The stupidest thing I could think of would be for them to send me home again. It would definitely go my credit for when.

Stig sighs even more deeply –

MARTHA: Poor thing. Shall I make you some tea and prepare a sandwich?

STIG: Yes, thank you. I can't understand what is wrong with me. I must have eaten something crazy.

MARTHA: Among some natives, it is so wisely arranged that when the woman is about to give birth, it is the man who goes to bed and screams and carries himself away. But then he accepts the congratulations as well and that is only right. Isn't that right, Little Stig?They enter a small white stepped square room with benches fixed to the wall, a table in the middle of the floor, where there are a number of old newspapers, a geranium stands and sloki. A sister comes and disappears and this seems terrifying to Stig. Two little black women sit and whisper in a corner. Then a door opens, bright light pours in from the corridor. A new sister appears, takes Martha's coat from Stig -

THE NURSE: Does Mrs. Eriksson want to come along this way? Maybe Mr. Eriksson will be kind and wait outside?

Stig embraces Martha and wants to kiss her, but she is already far away elsewhere and nods slightly absently –

MARTHA: Take good care of you, honey.

Then she immediately goes after the nurse who closes the door. Stig sinks down on a bench. The little old ladies titter and titter. Far away, something is heard that will freeze the blood in Stig's veins. There are dull growls, unconscious howls, rhythmic ebb and flow, gone for a while, recurring, rising and falling. The little old ladies titter and titter.

THE OLD WOMAN MÄRTA: I have received a new recipe for cucumber. You should let it sit much longer, but there should also be more sugar, says Anna.

THE OLD WOMAN ANNA: Yes, that was in Husmod, so you know that. But can Märta imagine that I was at Emma's the day before yesterday and she had brewed wine all by herself. We tasted it and I was actually really hooked.

The little old ladies giggled delightedly. The dull distant howls echo. Stig tries to cover his ears, but this looks so strange that he immediately removes his hands again. The big nurse re-enters –

THE NURSE: Mr. Johansson is going home. Your name was Johansson, right? Yes, in any case, you should go home.

STIG: How is it?

NURSE (surprised): How is it? Well, let's hope.

With that, she evaporates. Stig goes home. When he enters the apartment, he hears the nightingale chirping and singing, but the room seems terribly large and empty and lonely. He sits down at the table. There is Martha's sewing basket and his half-stuffed socks. On the bed is her nightgown. He pulls it to him and presses it to his face. Then he sits for a long time. All the while the nightingale sings. The concert hall. The next morning is the last rehearsal of the season. They play Beethoven's Symphony No. I in C major. During the last movement, one of the radio guys comes out of his scrubs and waves to Stig, who disappears quietly and quietly. The orchestra continues to play. The music flows around them like blue sunlit water in the summer sea out there. When Sönderby catches sight of Stig when he comes back in, he taps off in the middle of a beat, puts down the beat stick –

SÖNDERBY: And then we wait for a statement.

Stig has just sat down, gets up, at first he can't say anything but stands and swallows for a long time -

STIG (whispering): There were twins.

There is a violent racket going on. Some of the orchestra gives touche, others cheer like an international. Stig's neighbors hit him in the back so he loses his breath. It'll be like a big laugh in the whole room. In the evening, Stig visits his wife in the hospital room. She doesn't look very good. The skin is full of plitor, hair clumpy, lips wounded and broken, eyes fevered. Stig sits on the chair by the bed, lays his head next to Martha's on the pillow so that his mouth comes to her cheek. They do not bother to talk, but it is not necessary. THAT'S FOUR YEARS. It's August now. Martha and Stigs summer house up the coast from Hälsingborg counted. Sönderby is visiting, lying in the shade under a large apple tree and pretending to sleep. A little bit away, Lasse is dreaming on a blanket. The other twin - it's Lisa - plays with Stig on the stairs. In fact, she is very busy scrubbing the threshold. Stig sits mostly watching. In the middle of the pitch, Martha is engaged in a remarkable doll that she has knitted and that is now fitted with long yellow hair of woolen yarn. The bees are buzzing in the cress and there is a gentle breeze from the sea. Sönderby lies there looking at all the glory and now and then he turns his gaze towards the crown of the apple tree and the woolly cloud tops that hang at the top -

SÖNDERBY (thinking): It's nice not to be a writer. Now, for example, if I were to imagine myself portraying Stig and Martha from the first day they met four years ago, imagine what a mess I would make and what an untruthful, incomplete picture I would give. Of course I could describe certain specific episodes. I could tell you about how they met, married, had children, important reasoning they may have had, but if I told you about ten of the threads that bind these people together, what will become of the other hundred thousand?

Now pictures follow, accompanying Sönderby's speech -

SÖNDERBY (thinking): For example, I would certainly forget that episode last winter, when I came up to leave a score for STIG (perhaps also to talk a little. You get old and talkative. You have to be careful so carefully). The doorbell was broken so I just stepped on it. I stood in the tambour where it was dark and looked into the living room which was lit up. They sat on the floor and held each other. Neither of them said anything, yet the whole room was saturated with their togetherness. How could I describe the way they held each other, so boundlessly tender but also deeply erotically conscious. It was like music by Schubert, one of his Lieder, but this very thing amazed me too: I mean the joy AND the sadness. Why was there so much loneliness and childlike terror in their stillness. It was like a restrained sadness in the midst of this great joy. I had to go out again and then I knocked on the door. When Martha came and opened it, she still had everything in her eyes. I felt like a robber. Stig had already closed in on himself. But Martha shared for me. Yes, she is a strange little woman. Or how would I describe their way of talking about each other like now at dinner. Martha had a thousand things to attend to, but suddenly she says »Stig is so neat when he eats«. She said it as a joke, but who am I to write down all the shades of motherhood and tomfoolery that Martha brought to life in that very moment. Or the day they had argued. I noticed it very clearly. It was there in the air. Martha was a little quiet. She sat curled up on the sofa and sucked on a piece of sugar and looked at Stig. He talked to me all the time, but it was forced talk. He got up to go get the brandy but on the way to the cupboard he passed Martha, then he crawled up on the sofa, they looked at each other and Stig suddenly said: Hello, little one. This must have been a spell, for the oppressed mood, this indefinable air that had been deposited over the room, lightened and vanished like a gust of wind from the open sea. I don't understand it and can't tell you about it. Think of filling page after page of a book with these daily and momentary events, of determining the value of these thousand tones, of trying to decipher this complicated secret language which two lovers educate and speak freely for the protection of their most secret and finest sensations.

Sönderby turns on his side, puts the handkerchief correctly over his head and ends his musings -

SÖNDERBY: To truthfully depict a single day of their lives would fill many shelf meters of thick folios. Thank God this is not my job. I am not in the unpleasant situation of having to simplify, choose, reject, perhaps even invent and lie, I only need to reproduce what the Great Uncles created in spirit and truth. It is also my pleasure that no one can take away from me.

Meanwhile, Martha approaches Stig and Lisa with the doll. It has both got hair and a dress. Stig lets it walk a little here and there, then Lisa takes care of it. Stig lies down on his stomach in the grass. Martha sits down next to him. Stig tickles her with a blade of grass on her nose –

MARTHA: I think I've gotten so lucky.

STIG: Have you become wealthy. You haven't told me about that.

MARTHA: I have you and the kids and old Sonderby lying over there snoring and it's summer and the sun is shining and we have no worries.

STIG (irony): And we are all healthy and fit. Me who thought you won the lottery.

MARTHA: To ME, this is more than I ever thought a human being could have.

STIG: Yes. You are a woman. For you it is in a different way.

MARTHA: You think so? I can probably be worried too and think: Is it going to be like this for the rest of my life: little chores, little joys, little sorrows, nothing at all, nothing that drags you away. But that is a really terrible thought that should be beaten, don't you think?

STIG: I think it honors you.

MARTHA: Not at all.

STIG: It is not written anywhere that man should be satisfied, it does not even say that he should be happy.

Then Sonderby comes and interrupts –

SÖNDERBY: I think we have to leave now if we are to make it to the concert in reasonable time. Bye Martha and thanks for dinner.

For a long while, Sönderby and Stig walk silently by each other's side. Suddenly the old man breaks the silence –

SÖNDERBY: You are working on Beethoven's violin concerto, how is it going?

STIG: Not at all. Why are you asking that?

SÖNDERBY: But you continue to work?

STIG: Until then?

SÖNDERBY: I mean that you should let go of the idea of ​​becoming a soloist. You are a good orchestral musician. Be content with that.

STIG: I haven't asked you for any advice.

SÖNDERBY: By all means.

STIG: You don't have enough time. That's the whole thing. But now I'm going to take a leave of absence from your cursed orchestra and then I'm going to take proper lessons for Professor Sabaska. I have already written to him.

SÖNDERBY: It is arrogance and nothing else.

STIG (icy): Just because you happen to be old and unsuccessful, I don't have to be.

SÖNDERBY: We averages may also be needed. Without worker bees, no hives.

STIG: It's terrible to hear you talk. Like hearing someone who is already dead.

Then Sönderby laughs, but he doesn't say why he laughs. In addition, the bus arrives in town at the exact same moment. When Stig comes out after the concert, Nelly is waiting for him. She has a white robe –

STIG: Have you been waiting long?

NELLY: I just arrived. They walk for a while in silence, then Nelly stops and looks at Stig. Her face is small and white in the dark, her eyes are very large and completely black—

NELLY: Why are you trembling? Are you cold?

STIG: He is your husband after all, Mikael.

NELLY: I told him I love you.

STIG: What did he say then?

NELLY: He was very understanding.

STIG: It was hell.

NELLY: You shouldn't say that, because it might be a pity for him.

STIG: But not about me?

NELLY: No, not at all, because you are self-righteous and proud.

STIG: That's what Sönderby said too.

NELLY: Yes, but he doesn't love you and I do. Mikael Bro is sitting at the table reading a book and drinking coffee when they come in -

MIKAEL: Listen here. (reads:) In general, everything that is called spiritual science, whether it refers to the self, society, the state, morality or religion, is only an intellectual game with expressions, which are used as if they denoted something real.Mikael hits the open book with his hand and his eyes burn like coal in his head -

MIKAEL: He's a bather, that Hägerström, and he has my full sympathy.

STIG: He has mine too, but I ignore him.

NELLY: Stig is tired and sad. I don't think he wants to talk anymore tonight.Nelly becomes the jerk, but a key is put in the front door and someone comes in and pokes around for a while in the tambour -

NELLY: Our submission. It's terribly sad, but we have to for the economy.The usher steps into the room wearing a hat and coat. It's Marcel.

MARCEL (nervously): Good evening good evening. Well, you're still up. I went to the Grand and got into a bit of trouble.

STIG: Servant. I didn't know you lived here.

MARCEL (smiling): Neither did I. Before. But now I live here. From last night.

He goes out into the tambourine and takes off his coat and hat –

MARCEL: Well, you hang out in these circles. I really didn't think so.

Stig doesn't answer this, and Marcel probably doesn't wait for an answer either, but lights a cigarette and sits down by the radio, leans back in his chair, looks at the ceiling, takes a match, starts picking his teeth. Stig puts his hands down on the table and sits looking at them without moving a moment. Nelly takes off her wedding ring and lets it spin around, around, around. Mikael Bro sits there with his book and a thick red crayon and from time to time he underlines a suitable sentence. The radio insistently plays a nocturnal romance. After a while, Nelly switches from playing with the ring to biting her nails, Marcel takes a newspaper and with great rustle he folds the pages here and there. Still reading, Mikael Bro moves from the chair to the rocking chair where he starts rocking. Stig sits motionless and still has his hands on the table. Then Marcel leans over the radio and starts looking for another and more suitable music. Thereby, a long-lasting beeping, whining, sizzling and crackling sound occurs in the radio. Nelly reaches for the nail polish, in which she immerses herself. Marcel does not find any music, cuts off the radio and reclaims his viewing on the ceiling. Nelly is seized by playfulness and suddenly gets the idea that she should paint a nail on Stig because his hands are spread out and close at hand. Marcel turns around in his chair and he also holds out his hand and wants to be painted on a nail. He smiles kindly but Nelly pushes his hand away and dedicates herself to Stig. But Marcel persists. Stig begins to look at him and Marcel fixes his smiling gaze on Stig's. For the second time, Nelly pushes his hand away and is about to return to Stig, when the latter, still staring at Marcel, makes a violent movement with his arm to stop Nelly. Instead, he hits the bottle with nail polish, it falls over and a large patch spreads over the white tablecloth.

At dawn, a taxi stops outside Stig's and Martha's summer house. Stig wavers out and pays. He has one hand wrapped with a handkerchief that is very bloody. The car drives away with a quiet, spinning sound. Spotlights are no longer on the morning light, which is rising at great speed. Out at sea, the gulls scream. Stig wavers onto the sandy aisle and sinks into Martha's resting chair. There he sits and hangs for a few moments. His face is very pale and his mouth is compressed like holding back a scream of pain and rage. Eventually, he gets up, climbs up the stairs and begins to look for the key (can only use one hand) starting to pound on the door. It won't be long before Martha comes and opens. Stig doesn't go in, just holding out his hand with the bloody stirred handkerchief and the painted nail. Martha pulls him in to get him in, but he doesn't want to, and instead sits on the stairs, gets a hopeless back. Martha looks at that back, goes in and fetches bandages, sits beside her husband and begins to loosen the bloody handkerchief. At the same time, the sun begins to rise out of the sea.

STIG: I have to ask you something. Can't we move into town right now? As soon as possible.The apartment. Martha sits in the kitchen and gives Lisa supper. She kinks and doesn't want to eat properly. Stig comes out, stands in the door -

STIG: Was it necessary that you and the kids moved into town? You had such a good time in the country. Why don't you answer?

Martha drops Lisa on the floor, wipes her mouth with the bib and walks up to the sink, turning her back and neck to -

MARTHA: Lisa, get dressed now.Lisa disappears silently. Stig begins measuring the floor, stops just behind Martha, takes her around her arms and turns her around. She lets it happen but extremely unwilling -

STIG: Why are you treating me like a criminal?Martha looks far at him but still says nothing. A black fury begins to rise up in Stig -

STIG: Can you understand that Sabaska hasn't written and replied to my letter?

MARTHA: Let me go. You're hurting me.Martha tries to get free but Stig keeps her in a tight grip and it darkens more and more in him -

STIG: Sönderby or you might have written too.He begins to shake her, but not very much—

MARTHA: You're crazy. Let me go.

She breaks free. A fight is about to break out, but just at that moment Lasse comes in with the old and now slightly shaggy teddy bear -

LASSE: Look what Lisa has done.Lisa's startled nose looms in the doorway. The poor animal's head has come off.

MARTHA: It does not matter. I'll stitch him up tomorrow. It goes on a bit of a kick.

LASSE: Yes, but Lisa took the bear even though she knows she can't. She's cheeky, Lisa.

MARTHA: We can talk about it. Off to bed now.Lasse obeys but looks hurt and gloomy at his father. The door closes.

MARTHA (low): We don't cause any trouble here with the kids around us, remember that, Stig. Whatever happens, no trouble as the kids see.Stig walks out of the kitchen. Martha walks into the dining nook that has been converted into a nursery. The kids have gone to bed. They have books and toys in the beds. She tucks them in, turns out the light—

LISA: Now you tell a story.

MARTHA: I can't tonight.

LISA: Why is that?

MARTHA: I am so tired and sleepy.

LISA: You can sit here for a while in the dark anyway. It is very healthy.Martha sits down on a stool over by the door. She clasps her hands on her knees. It gets quiet. She hears them breathing and moving a little in the beds. She doesn't really know how long she's been sitting, but when she enters the other room, Stig is already getting undressed -

MARTHA: How much time is it?

STIG: 12:30.He starts turning on his wristwatch. Martha walks up to the window and opens it. She stands there for a moment and looks out -

MARTHA: It's turning into a terrible fog tonight.

STIG: I'll talk to you.

From the sea honk the mistphones. It sounds ghostly and desolate with these distant, recurring roars. Martha pulls down the blind -

MARTHA: Remember what Sönderby said: It's like a bunch of cows trapped in a tree trunk.Stig won't answer. He has put on his pajamas, crawls up in bed and waits for Martha to be finished. When she strips off, he looks at her, calmly and scrutinizing. Martha sees his gaze and attracts the robe.

STIG (a little mockery): What's the matter now?MARTHA: I don't like it when you look at me that way. It's like you were lying there comparing.

STIG (smile): Maybe I am.

Martha sits down and starts washing her face with face water and cotton but stops and puts the cotton ball away and just sits -

MARTHA: Can't we be nice to each other again? Why can't we even talk to each other about a single thing now?

STIG: It pays so little.

Martha sighs, does not answer but finishes her toilet, puts on the nightgown in the cover of the dressing gown and crawls into bed. Stig turns off the light. They're both lying quiet, listening to their own breathing and the mistphones honking out there at sea. It's a kid's cry. Martha paws up and into the nursery. Lisa sits in bed crying alone but restrained -

MARTHA: What is Lisa?

LISA: It was a big black man.

MARTHA: Maybe it was a chimney sweep.

LISA: This was a dangerous black man, you see.

MARTHA: Now you're going to get a piece of sugar and then you're going to lie down and dream something funny instead.

LISA: I wasn't dreaming at all.

MARTHA (low): There are no big black men here.

LISA: He came into the kitchen and looked at me and he looked very dangerous.

Martha goes into the kitchen and turns on the lamp –

MARTHA: You see, there is no one here.

Lisa gets a piece of sugar and peace is restored. Martha paws back into the other room. Stig has fallen asleep, but his face is not calm and relaxed. It shrugs his eyelids and he has a wrinkle between his eyebrows. The mouth looks bitter. Martha lies and looks at him for a very long time and the fear and loneliness grows greater and greater in her heart. Then he suddenly wakes up, strokes his face with both hands. Then he drags her next to him and kisses her vehemently on the mouth and starts stroking her over her shoulders and breasts. She gets tears in her eyes but lets him be held. He kisses her several times but her face is dead -

MARTHA (sudden): Leave me alone! I think it's disgusting! I can't help it, but I think it's disgusting - disgusting!

He releases her in a flash and she slides over to her bed where she burrows into the pillow and cries silently. Stig bites his knuckles with resentment.

STIG: Don't cry! No one hears it anyway.

Finally he freezes and has to get out of bed, puts on an old bathrobe, goes to the kitchen, gets a pilsner from the fridge. Time and time again, he has to cross his face. Martha's crying is silent. The bed light is lit inside the room and she sits in the bed forward-leaning -

MARTHA: We cannot go on like this.

STIG: You'll have to decide that for yourself.

MARTHA: Somehow it feels like the end.

Stig does not answer but drinks out and comes in and sits on her bed edge, after he has put out in the kitchen -

MARTHA: I've tried. I've done the best I could. I have not made reproaches or accusations. I've always tried to understand you, always.

STIG: So the fault is mine.

MARTHA: I never made any questions.

STIG: Why would you ask me about things that don't concern you.

MARTHA: It doesn't concern me that you are together with Nelly Bro.

STIG: Not as far as I can see. You can be morally indignant if it amuses you, but keep it to yourself. I'm not interested.

MARTHA: But why? Varför? Varför?

STIG: What then?

MARTHA: Why are you with her?

STIG: Why do you trip over dog shit on the street? Because you don't look up. And then you wear it.

MARTHA: That you can!

STIG (scornfully): You should say that as before we met lay to the right and left. You were even with that nasty Marcel.

MARTHA: But that was then. Before we had the kids. Don't they mean anything?

STIG: You used to have that too, although you got rid of them.

MARTHA: Sometimes I regret being stubborn when you didn't want us to have any children.

STIG: Do you see. You see, Martha.

MARTHA: Yes, I see. I see how shabby we have become.

Stig lies straight across his own bed and looks at the ceiling.

STIG: I know what the whole disease is. We don't think we're getting anything out of our life. We have been seized by clairvoyance both you and I. You learn to do that at our age, I've heard. At the same time as the clairvoyance comes the disgust. That is a natural consequence.

MARTHA: We used to be able to quarrel and be mean to each other, but then we just needed to reach out our hand and it was good again. Not even that. And we never had to argue and reason. It was such a great security.

STIG: And now we have discovered that there is no such thing as security.

MARTHA: Remember what you said here our first night together: The main thing is that you become a real person.

STIG: There was so much talk at the time.

MARTHA: But it was true.

STIG: That was a lie, Martha. In a while, this is no longer so important, and even a little later, we can make jokes about it. In the end, we forget that we were ever unhappy or that we had longed and hoped. It is the end of the song when you are old and wise, as it is called.

MARTHA: Maybe it feels that way to you. But I will never be like that. Never!

STIG: Remember that night when I came home with my hand cut. Then my lucidity began. And it was so excruciating that I reached out my fist through a window pane to get so messed up that I would never have to dream any more soloist dreams. But when I later stood there with my hand bloody, I thought: How ridiculous I am! Why is nobody laughing? The hand made it. You cannot get away with it that easily. Sönderby is right. I am a mediocre who refuses to accept his mediocrity.

MARTHA (bitter): Me and me! Don't you notice that sounds terrible?

STIG: By all means. I'm sorry. We are not going to talk about it any more.That is all they have to say for a long time.

MARTHA: I'm going to Grandma's. It's good for the kids there, too.

STIG: How are you gonna get money for that trip?

MARTHA: They thought I'd let you give me.

STIG: I have no money.

MARTHA: It was extraordinary.

STIG: You got last week.

MARTHA: On the phone, yes, as we were behind, and then the milk store and the rent.

STIG: The money used to be enough.

MARTHA: You want to see the book. You think I'm embezzling?

STIG: You don't care about saving, that's the whole thing.

MARTHA: I guess you'll have to take an advance like everyone else.

STIG: I have already done that.

MARTHA: YOU must have data. I haven't seen that money.

STIG: You have nothing to do with my money.

MARTHA: Well, as far as the household is concerned.

STIG: Anyway, there's no money for your sudden trip. We are relatively poor actually and cannot afford expenses for emotional reasons.

MARTHA (nasty): And the money you give to Nelly Bro?

STIG: Shut up, please.

MARTHA: What kind of tone are you using?

STIG: I use the same tone towards you as you towards me.

MARTHA: It costs money to have a lady-in-waiting.

STIG: Yes, but still somehow it is more honorable because the price is fixed.

MARTHA: Now you were rather crude, I think.

STIG: How sensitive you have become! Were you as sensitive at that time with Marcel… It must have been complicated.

MARTHA (raw): I don't understand how you can have a mistress, you who these days don't even meet the minimum requirements of a husband.

STIG (raw): Probably your own fault.

MARTHA: Of course. I have been naive enough to imagine that one would be faithful.

STIG: Now stop, Martha.

MARTHA: But you must have an outlet for your artistic temperament, and Nelly suited your misunderstood genius better. Although she probably didn't have too much fun either, poor thing.

Stig then punches her in the face. He hits her as hard as he can. Then he strikes several times completely mindlessly and without pause. She cowers with her head in her hands and her face down to try to protect herself from the blows that rain down on her. But she doesn't scream, not a sound comes from her. Finally he gets tired and just sits as if deflated, breathing raggedly and heavily. Martha raises her face. She is bleeding from her nose and from her lips. Then he is gripped by horror and despair at what he has done -

STIG (whispering): Forgive me, Martha. Forgive me.

MARTHA (calm and dead): This last was my own fault. I had myself to blame.

STIG: Forgive me anyway.

He tries to touch her but she pushes his hand away—

MARTHA (hatefully): But the other I do not forgive. You may be convinced that I shall raise money for the journey, if I am to go down the street and beg for it.

STIG: Martha. Martha – not so.

MARTHA: Don't touch me. Don't touch me. You disgust me so much I want to spit in your face. Then Stig stops trying to talk to her. They look at each other. A strong and newly awakened hatred. And both harden themselves—

STIG: By all means. You are the one who wants it this way. You must get your wish across. I'm going to ask Sönderby for money tomorrow and it's going to be damn nice not to see you anymore.

HALF A YEAR LATER. At home with Mikael Bro. Stig is reading on a pad. It says: Says it's a brain bleed but I know Nelly has poisoned me. Stig lowers the block and looks at Mikael Bro, who is lying in his bed motionless and with a petrified face. One eyelid is paralyzed, he can move his eyes, his hands run over the blanket, he breathes through his mouth, which stands like a mailbox opening. In here in the bedroom, the blinds are drawn, it is semi-twilight. But in the other room the sun shines brightly. Cold winter Sunday. The bells are ringing. Nelly stands by Mikael's headboard. She bends down to stroke his cheek, but he lunges at her like an angry dog, she screams in hysterics and cowers. Mikael mutters something hateful with his paralyzed tongue, and motions for Stig to take her away. The murmur rises to an inarticulate noise. Stig takes Nelly by the arm and leads her out of the room, closes the door. She controls her crying and takes her hands from her face –

NELLY: Do you think he is tormented?

STIG: Probably.

NELLY: That's good. I wish he is in so much pain that he wants to scream all the time.

STIG: He can't scream, he's paralyzed -

NELLY: That's the beauty of it, you see.

STIG: You must hate him, you.

NELLY (shrugging): Oh, he'll die soon!

STIG: Sometimes it's like a dream.

NELLY: Then what? This?

STIG: You refuse to believe that some things are true.

NELLY: I'm afraid of him too. Sometimes at night I think he's going to get up and come in and beat me to death or strangle me.

STIG: I still almost think you poisoned him.

NELLY: I've often thought I would.

STIG: What has he actually done to you?

NELLY: What has he done to me? He just exists. Somehow I depend on him. I don't know me.

STIG: You may differ.

NELLY: Then where would I go? Would you take care of me?

STIG: You could take a job.

NELLY: Others will work - but not me.

STIG: Then you always have Marcel.

NELLY (laughing): I may be wrong, but I'm always on the wrong horse.

STIG: It's because you're so fucking mean and lack human feelings.

NELLY: What about your wife? Who walked away from you.

STIG: We loved each other.

NELLY: And then suddenly you didn't love each other anymore. I thank you for such love. Then I prefer my line.

She goes to the corridor, takes off her dressing gown and starts to put on a dress –

NELLY: I think it's cold.

STIG: It's minus thirteen degrees.

NELLY: One day I'll find a millionaire. He will have a pleasure hunt. During the winter we will cruise on the Caribbean Sea. He will have a black boy, who has very sharp palms and nails, and I will love him when I am free from the millionaire. I'm definitely getting fat all over again.

STIG: It's the age.

NELLY (sighs): Oh well, you don't really have much time. There is reason to turn the corner. Do you know a millionaire? Then the doorbell rings -

NELLY: You go in. He still can't bear to see me.

STIG: I don't look after him.

NELLY: No you're not, but he considers you his only friend.

STIG: Poor Krake.

NELLY (reflecting): I agree.

When Stig comes in to see Mikael, he is lying with part of Shakespeare's Collected Works on his stomach. He points to something he wrote on the pad. Stig sits down so he can see Nelly. Twilight prevails in the bedroom. The other room is brightly lit like a stage. Nelly walks around the room outside, pulls on her socks, stops in front of a mirror, begins to comb her hair. Stig reads in a low voice –

STIG (reading): Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then not heard from. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Marcel has come in to see Nelly. He waddles around like a big cat in heat, tries to touch her, but she silently but angrily lashes out. He makes another stroke across the floor –

STIG (reading): Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then not heard from. It is a tale Told by an idiot,…

The voice stutters. He stands up. These words hit him with violent force. He puts the book down and can't make a sound. The sun shines bright and hard. The church bells are ringing. Nelly stands in the middle of the light and Marcel comes forward once more and makes a renewed attack. Mikael cannot see any of this. He lies motionless, filled with knowledge, writes on the pad: »I'm a damn human and it's right for me what happens, but you have to be careful. Be careful, Stig.« Stig reads what Mikael wrote and gives him the pad back -

STIG: You Mikael. Now I'm going my way and never coming back. I'm very grateful for what you've taught me but I can't stay here a minute longer because I don't want to be like you three and the only one who can help me is Martha.

He doesn't bother to look at Mikael as he walks away. Martha comes from the post office with a letter in her hand. She goes up into the WOODS for herself and as she walks she reads the letter from Stig -

STIG (voice): Dear Martha, You will be surprised now because you have not heard from me in almost three months. But I have to write to you and tell you that things have happened to me, because it was as if all my madness suddenly became understandable to me and I discovered how I have wasted the only thing that really has any value in this life…

The concert hall. As Stig sits during a break at the rehearsal and the orchestra is around him and tuning, he fishes up a letter from Martha and quietly reads it to himself -

MARTHA (vote): Dear Stig! When I got your letter in hand I was very worried at first, since I felt all this last time that you were alone and had a hard time in many ways. I have read it several times and although you are very few words, I can read myself that something important has happened to you. I, too, have been thinking about this loneliness and I now know that we will never be divorced, that it would be a cruel mistake. I don't think I'm going to come home, but I can't wait much for you.

It's night. Martha sits in the window of her small WIND ROOM and she reads a letter from Stig. The kids sleep in their beds, the moon draws large squares on the floor -

STIG (voice): My dearest beloved Martha!! I was so damn happy about your letter that I almost had to laugh for a while. You see people close again after so much and I guess I would have done that too in some way with you and the kids, because it hurt too much. Or I've never before really understood how deeply I love you.It's raining.

Stig stands under an umbrella and reads a letter from Martha -

MARTHA (voice): My beloved friend! Now I want you to come here and pick us up, we have so much that we have to arrange and plan for the summer, haven't we? Oh dear, how stupid and strange it feels to write. I would like to say a lot, but it looks silly and sentimental on paper. Believe me, I've tried. By the way, I don't think we need to talk any more when we meet. I know exactly how to show you how much I like you. Can you guess? Come soon! – – –

On a windy and sunny spring day, when it alternately blows and shines hot over the sea and the plain, Stig takes the train to pick up his wife and children. The train honks and drives, it rattles and fumes like real trains do, the curtain waving in the open compartment window. Opposite Stig is a woman and an old man, both sleeping well. But Stig he sits there thinking -

STIG (tänker): This train is running very slowly. I'd like to drop off and push next to for a while. Maybe I'd shoot on some slope if I got in that mood. I think it will be so remarkable to hear her speak, for example, and say: "Yes, but now you're pretty stupid anyway" or "When was the last time you washed your ears?" or "You poor thing, are you in so much pain in the stomach. Oh, oh, where does it feel the worst?" or also to sit in the cinema together again at some idiotic movie and hold each other's hands or sit in the kitchen at night after a concert and eat from the pantry and drink brandy and beer and talk and joke and don't say a serious word.

The attic room. Martha dresses and adorns herself. She is shaken up like a young girl about to meet her lover for the first time. This results in the hair standing on end and cracking, the powder running out, the bra breaking, Lisa using her earrings, after which they disappeared without a trace. But the blouse is white as a summer cloud and she takes her most high-heeled summer shoes and she perfumes herself so that her body is fragrant. But she doesn't care about the lipstick -

MARTHA: No lipstick, it just looks crazy afterwards. I can bite my lips a little just before the train arrives and they will still be nicely red. I'm actually pretty good-looking and I've become tan. It doesn't look like I didn't sleep last night either. Yes, but it's ridiculous, I'm only going to meet my old man. We've seen each other to the limit. And yet everything is new, new, new! Washed clean! Freshly bathed! How fun it will be to cook again! Being in my own kitchen, donating and commanding, sleeping in my own bed, feeling his warmth, having him sleeping next to me, never again be.. alone … never be alone again.

The train honks and honks, making an enormous noise. Now it's also raining, but the sun is shining. In the north stands a huge rainbow. There will be a thousand pearls on the passenger compartment window. Stig gets happier and happier.

STIG: Her face … her eyes … the fine wrinkles around the eyelids. I've seen those streaks get there, I'm guilty of some of them myself. The chin that is so round and determined, the ear that is so small. A work of art is her ear – and her mouth which is so lovely and soft to kiss. I love her body too. The smooth skin on the shoulders and breasts that never really recovered after the babies, but are as sensitive as living beings. Her feet… small with high arches, the fine line of the neck, the friendly sensual curve of the stomach. The waist … so narrow I can wrap my hands around it. I love her because we have hit each other, because we have hurt each other, but also for the thousand nights we have had in joy and complete pleasure. Soon the train will stop and then maybe she will be there to meet me. Damn I'm nervous! But I'm happy too! As happy as I've ever been. And as poetic as I am now, no poet in world literature ever was. They can go home and put the whole band to bed, especially those who wrote about love. For my love for Martha is the most extraordinary and Martha's love for me the most incomprehensible that ever occurred in this wretched and dark world.

The train stops. The sun shines hot but it blows. Martha sees him coming towards her, and he is very thin and long-haired, and looks shyly at his nose, yet she sees that he is very happy, for his face shines like a lantern. And she goes up to him and they meet in the middle of a school trip that will come on to go to Stockholm. It's about 100 kids and it's a noise and a crowd, something that Stig and Martha hardly notice. They leave there tightly printed next to each other, dumbfounded and sunk. The wind is catching up in Martha's skirt. It's like a piece of music just that. A FEW YEARS LATER. The apartment. Lisa is sitting on the floor, is now seven years old, has the strange doll in her arms. It looks both tarnished and miserable -

LISA (to the manikin): You see, you haven't been very kind, so you're not allowed to come with us now when we're going to Grandma's to visit. You're gonna have to lie here under the couch and sleep until I get back. That makes you so happy. Now you're going to sleep.

She pushes the doll under the couch and walks away to inspect the luggage. Martha is about to dress Lasse –

LASSE: We're going to catch very big fish and then a beautiful nice one that we're going to take home and keep in the bathtub and I'm going to teach him to talk.

LISA: Fish cannot talk.

LASSE: They can learn.

LISA: They can't at all.

LASSE: You couldn't talk but you learned.

LISA: Yes, but I'm not a fish.

LASSE: I have met a fish that can talk and it was a boy my age who had taught him. Lisa is extremely shaken by this sentence –

LISA: Mother, now Lasse is lying again!

MARTHA: Stig, do you want to call for a car.

LISA: Dad, Lasse is lying.

STIG: Lasse is not lying at all. He writes poetry and why shouldn't a fish be able to speak. You can never be completely sure. Then he orders the taxi –

MARTHA: I think you should ask Sonderby to come home tonight. There is Vichy water in the fridge.

STIG: It gets a little lonely.

MARTHA (laughing): You think it will be nice.

STIG: Well, the kids could travel and then you could stay here with me and have a vacation.

MARTHA: You're stupid. What do you think grandma would say about that?

STIG: In any case, you have your pack with you as if you were going to be gone until doomsday.

MARTHA: You don't have to come with me to the station. I can take a city bid.

STIG: And what is this? A bomb? Stig rummages through the stuff, there is a large brown and slightly angular package –

MARTHA: It's a liquor kitchen.

STIG: What now! Do you want to bring a stove with you too?

MARTHA: That's much better. We get to live in the summer cottage and cook ourselves and not bother the old people.

STIG (sighs): Yeah yeah yeah.

MARTHA: Sigh, but you'll think it's so nice when you get there.

Now Stig is standing on the platform. Martha, Lisa and Lasse are in the window –

MARTHA: You should go get a haircut.

STIG: It's so nasty because you get so many small hairs inside the collar.

MARTHA: If you came along now, I could cut your hair.

STIG: Coming later.

MARTHA (sighing heavily): Strange that people always long for you anyway.

STIG: Why is it strange?

MARTHA: As long as we've been married. Don't lick the window Lasse, it's dirty.

STIG: You will have beautiful weather.

MARTHA: It looks like it was about to spring.

STIG: Why isn't the train running?

MARTHA: Well, you want to get rid of us?

STIG: No, but it's always so silly to stand like this at a station. Then the train leaves -

STIG: Goodbye, goodbye.

MARTHA: Goodbye my boy. She takes his hand and holds it for a moment. The kids wave.

LISA: Say hello to her who is under the sofa, that she shouldn't be lazy because I'll be back soon. Then they disappear from sight, because the train enters a switch curve.

Stig walks home, turns suddenly, feels a dull emptiness, tries to aim for the train, but it's gone. He stands on the platform and doesn't know where to go -

STIG: Martha, my love. Now you left and I was so sad. I don't understand why.

Stig is on the floor face down. Now the sun is shining. It is morning. He sits up. The eyes are dry, the face is drawn into a painful grimace and petrified. He hears laughter and children's screams from outside the street, then he hears Martha's voice right next to his ear –

MARTHA (voice): If I were like you, I would still be happy to go to the rehearsal today at ten o'clock and sit as usual in my usual place and do my job.

He gets up, takes the violin case and the hat and leaves.

The concert hall. Just before the rehearsal is to begin, Sönderby approaches Stig -

SÖNDERBY: I have heard about what happened. I … I … you … you see I'm … you have to understand that you don't have to come here if you don't want to yourself.

Stig does not look at Sönderby but gets up from his chair. He holds the violin under his arm and the bow points to the notes.

STIG (whispering): Thank you. But it is better to work.

SÖNDERBY: Yes, you do what you want.

Sönderby pats him on the neck –

STIG (whispering): Don't touch me.

The members of the orchestra gather on the podium. The choir will also be present on this day. It arches in through the large doors and sets up behind the orchestra.

SÖNDERBY: We start at the double line. There are eleven bars before the recitative.

He raises the baton but lowers it again –

SÖNDERBY: The cellos and basses must sing like hell, you understand.

He thinks a little, pushes his glasses up on his forehead and slurs, finds it difficult to express himself -

SÖNDERBY: That is the question of joy, then. Not the kind of joy that expresses itself in laughter or even the kind of joy that says: I am happy. What I mean is a joy so great and special that it is beyond pain and boundless despair. You see, it is a joy beyond all understanding. Yes, I can't explain it better.

Stig feels that someone is watching him. He looks down towards the salon. Lasse has come in quietly and sat down on the first bench. He suddenly looks at Stig. Sönderby raises the baton and suddenly he bursts into flames and the fire spreads and everyone is caught in the fire. The huge recitative rushes up against the walls in an explosive joy beyond all understanding.

Afterword by Jan Holmberg

In the summer of 1949, Ingmar Bergman went on one of his few vacations with his friend and actor Birger Malmsten. The trip went to the French Riviera. In BERGMAN ABOUT BERGMAN, he talks about the trip:

Then I met some good friends down there - painters and such - you were never really sober and so I sat longing for home and began to romanticize my marriage - the one at the time - the one that I had previously with real delight cut to pieces in connection with THIRST. I got a little sentimental and then I started thinking about the time in Hälsingborg, how fun it was and the symphony orchestra and that I wasn't as brilliant as I had imagined. The first real setbacks had begun to appear. But people thought that even if you were average, you had to work, and so I manufactured some kind of consolation for that. That it is the foot soldiers of culture that are important and not this remarkable cavalry.

That's how the work on Till joy began.

[longwheel]

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