Mahler's Fifth

With the music playing, I sit down to write.  Already, I've started pruning the few sentences I've written, pausing abstractedly to watch the cats groom one another.

The first movement surges to its end; then, the second unfurls its unbearable pathos.

And I'm back in Aschenbach's world.  For how can I not be, after seeing Death in Venice years ago?  The second movement of the symphony, the leitmotif of the movie, so expresses Aschenbach's quixotic quest, that any other association to the music is overshadowed by images of a lonely Venetian beach, Dirk Bogarde's rouged cheeks...

I think about the creative impulse and its curious meanderings, intimately affected by the sediments of one's past experiences and associations.

When the last movement draws to its end, I can hear the desultory breathing from the cats, and I return to my world.