Oh.
I just saw the most amazing movie.
(I really shouldn’t have, I’ve had a cold and then I couldn’t fall asleep last night, so I had two cups of coffee today at the advisory committee meeting thingy, which for me is two cups too many, and I’m really exhausted. I feel faint. I only started watching something random from Netflix because I wanted something to calm down for a minute, I hadn’t planned to see all of it, but once I got into it, I just couldn’t turn it off…)
Impromptu. From 1991, with Judy Davis and Hugh Grant, about the author George Sand and the composer Frédéric Chopin. I can’t decide if the acting was brilliant or embarrassingly poor, and there were some definite unnecessary dramatic turns – but at the core, this queer love story. This very imperfect pursuit by George Sand. The cowardice of Frédéric Chopin. The mistakes! And the music.
Chopin is what I listen to when I need to focus. I need the simplicity and clarity of his nocturnes to make sense of my thoughts.
I must read George Sand. The way she is portrayed in the film, she seemed to be a refreshingly in-your-face kind of feminist in a time when the first wave of feminism had barely even started.
And I also want to lie on the floor underneath a grand piano, listening to someone playing an impromptu above my head. Forever.
* ~ *
(Oh, and I also wish I could be that person for real, who contently would just lie there and listen to someone else play for me – but we all know I’m not that person. After a couple of songs, I would become restless and then I would ask whoever is playing to switch to something with lyrics, so that I can sing. I have quite an unattractive personality that way.
But maybe with time, I will develop a skill for listening too. One can always hope.)
Katja Malmborg 