Ceremonies of a solitary

Private music, music no one else hears, reinforces your invisibility by giving you a private structure of time to set against public time.

Stravinsky called music 'the sole domain in which man realizes the present'. But living in the present is (contrary to vulgar opinion) nearly impossible in a modern city, which always hungers for the future and eats the past. One reason for the vogue of headphones among city dwellers is the sense they give that one escaped the city's voracity, because one is inside the music. The desire to be inside a record is made graphic by the desert island fantasy.

Ceremonies of a solitary, "The Recording Angel", EVAN EISENBERG



Illustration for book cover: Stranded, Rock and Roll for a Desert Island