Last week while watching Visconti’s Death in Venice we were taken with a piece of music from the soundtrack, Mahler’s Adagietto, from his 5th Symphony. On a subsequent long drive we decided to listen to the work as a whole. Preceding the Adagietto there are three movements. Each is quite brassy, loud and seem to be trying to invoke a sort of populist, noisy heroics (think garnished Hapsburg general or grandiose forest waterfall). But the Adagietto by contrast, is gorgeous. In it there is deep sadness and sincere feeling; dignity amidst emotional ruin, melancholic resignations seeking harbor in graceful humility. We were more moved than when we heard the piece in the film. The work in context amplified the earnestness — the slog through the blaring preface shaped the tenderness.
        The listening of this piece directly abutted a bucolic walk with T____R. Under the influence of the recent musical feeling we started discussing the web, particularly how the web unlike a symphonic piece (or a novel or film) is a wholly compressed affair. T____R described it well by saying that the internet lacks ambience. There is no conveyance online, you are always right there; transitory synapses are nonexistent. Pending one’s perspective there are shortcomings (or even difficulties) that occur due to this compacting. We often wonder if there is some sort of reverb like effect or Winchster mansion-like non-linearity that can be introduced to slow arrivals and leave more room for blossoming and forming on the web.
        Risking vagueness we will leave off with a quote that points to possible concerns. It is by Roland Barthes from his engrossing lecture The Neutral: “People who understand quickly frighten me.”