Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Intuition: In this scene from Hugo’s Les Misérables, the child Cosette encounters Valjean for the first time. Her abusive caretakers have forced her to fetch water from deep in a woods, on a winter night. As she is carrying the bucket of water, which is far too heavy for her, suddenly she feels her burden lifted. She seems to sense Valjean’s kindness immediately.

She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat, but she dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Thénardier, even at a distance: it was her custom to imagine the Thénardier always present.  However, she could not make much headway in that manner, and she went on very slowly. In spite of diminishing the length of her stops, and of walking as long as possible between them, she reflected with anguish that it would take her more than an hour to return to Montfermeil in this manner, and that the Thénardier would beat her. This anguish was mingled with her terror at being alone in the woods at night; she was worn out with fatigue, and had not yet emerged from the forest. On arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she was acquainted, made a last halt, longer than the rest, in order that she might get well rested; then she summoned up all her strength, picked up her bucket again, and courageously resumed her march, but the poor little desperate creature could not refrain from crying, "O my God! my God!"  At that moment she suddenly became conscious that her bucket no longer weighed anything at all: a hand, which seemed to her enormous, had just seized the handle, and lifted it vigorously. She raised her head. A large black form, straight and erect, was walking beside her through the darkness; it was a man who had come up behind her, and whose approach she had not heard. This man, without uttering a word, had seized the handle of the bucket which she was carrying.  There are instincts for all the encounters of life.  The child was not afraid. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume II – Cosette; Book Third – Accomplishment of a Promise Made To a Dead Woman, Chapter V, ”The Little One All Alone”.]

Common Sense, from Mark Twain: 

Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it.  She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it.  But it warn't so.  I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks.  It warn't any good to me without hooks.  I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work.  By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool.  She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way. [Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1906), Chapter III, “We Ambuscade the A-rabs”.]

Novels:

• Lynd Ward, Six Novels in Woodcuts (The Library of America, 2010) is a collection of graphic novels, in which the author tells stories exclusively through artistic visual depiction.
• John Irving, The Cider House Rules:  A Novel (Modern Library, 1985).
• Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (Del Ray, 1997): it allows the bearer to see what others wish to conceal.
• Audrey Schulman, Three Weeks in December: A Novel (Europa Editinos, 2012): “It’s a story about the senses, about perception and observation, the signals we send out into the world.”
• Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux): “It’s about an ambivalent bride. It’s about PTSD, grief, forgiveness, bad mothers, womanhood, monogamy and the nature of time itself. It’s about being a woman trapped by her subconscious and social conventions. It’s a Homeric quest to reclaim control over the heroine’s own life and sanity.”
• Casey McQuiston, The Pairing: A Novel (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2024): “Theo and Kit are childhood soul mates who fall in love, move in together, and break up just before a three-week European food and wine tour. Now the nonrefundable tour tickets are about to expire, and Theo (they/them) has decided to embark on the trip solo. Unfortunately, Kit has the same idea. . . . Soon our duo is back to their old game batting improvised cocktail and dessert recipes back and forth, bonding over imaginary dishes as they eat and drink and et cetera in every city of the journey — until they finally end up where they truly want to be.” The heart will not be denied.

The following extended passage from Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, Book Eleven, Chapter XX, illustrates the idea and experience of intuition.

Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.

In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance it seems as much alive as other hives.

The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the smell and the sound that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the beekeeper's tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees with their abdomens threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid vibration of their wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From the alighting board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell of honey and venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long black robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly only bees laden with honey flew into the hive, and they flew out empty; now they fly out laden. The beekeeper opens the lower part of the hive and peers in. Instead of black, glossy bees - tamed by toil, clinging to one another's legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless hum of labor - that used to hang in long clusters down to the floor of the hive, drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately in various directions on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a neatly glued floor, swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings, there is a floor littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees scarcely moving their legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared away.

The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the super. Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the combs and keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex structures of the combs, but no longer in their former state of purity. All is neglected and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and stealthily prowling about the combs, and the short home bees, shriveled and listless as if they were old, creep slowly about without trying to hinder the robbers, having lost all motive and all sense of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies knock awkwardly against the walls of the hive in their flight. Here and there among the cells containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of bees, by force of habit and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with efforts beyond their strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or bumblebee without knowing why they do it. In another corner two old bees are languidly fighting, or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, without themselves knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile intent. In a third place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack some victim and fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap of corpses. The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine the brood cells. In place of the former close dark circles formed by thousands of bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery of generation, he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they had guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only a few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the enemy's hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are dead and fall as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the hive, chalks a mark on it, and when he has time tears out its contents and burns it clean.

Poetry

You say you love; but with a voice
Chaster than a nun’s, who singeth
The soft vespers to herself
While the chime-bell ringeth—
O love me truly!

You say you love; but with a smile
Cold as sunrise in September,
As you were Saint Cupid’s nun,
And kept his weeks of Ember—
O love me truly!

You say you love; but then your lips
Coral tinted teach no blisses,
More than coral in the sea—
They never pout for kisses—
O love me truly!

You say you love; but then your hand
No soft squeeze for squeeze returneth;
It is like a statue’s, dead,—
While mine for passion burneth—
O love me truly!

O breathe a word or two of fire!
Smile, as if those words should burn me,
Squeeze as lovers should—O kiss
And in thy heart inurn me—
O love me truly!

[John Keats, “You Say You Love”]

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Conductor Claudio Abbado “had a special gift described as 'a sense of absolute pulse, an unerring sense of the right and natural tempo relations in a piece that could give shape and meaning even to the most seemingly amorphous of works, and within that a supple life to the individual musical phrases that no contemporary has equaled.'”. “. . . he basically doesn’t say anything in rehearsals, and speaks so quietly, because he’s so shy, so people can get bored. But it works because everyone knows the performances are so great. I’ve never known anybody more compelling. He’s the most natural conductor in the world. Some conductors need to verbally articulate what they want through words, but Claudio just shows it, just does it.” He once said: “For me, listening is the most important thing: to listen to each other, to listen to what people say, to listen to music.” He has been the main subject of a documentary film. Here he is in interview, in rehearsal, and in performance. Here is a link to his playlists.

Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartet No. 10 in E flat Major, Op. 74, “Harp” (1809) (approx. 29-33’) is a middle-period quartet of great feeling, with “a dash of impressionistic pointillism”. It “gets its name from the unusually prominent use of pizzicato in its first movement. Structured in the standard four-movement pattern, it features a sonata-form first movement with slow introduction, a songful slow movement, and a whirlwind scherzo connected without a break to a theme-and-variations finale.” “This quartet is wholly beautiful, almost impressionistic in an approach of sonority and diabolical for its character.” “There’s an unbearable lightness of being to this quartet. The writing is original and challenging, yet not overpowering.” Best recordings are by Quartetto Italiano in 1956, Vlach String Quartet in 1960, Alban Berg Quartet in 1979, Vermeer Quartet in 1984, Takács Quartet in 2001, The Lindsays in 2002, Pražák Quartet in 2003, Engegård Quartet in 2010, Artemis Quartet in 2011, Suske Quartett in 2013, Arianna String Quartet in 2017, Quatuor Ébène in 2019, Cuarteto Casals in 2019, and Ehnes Quartet in 2021.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 4 (1934) (approx. 30-36’), is craggy, tough and uncompromising. Many music aficionados of the time surmised that he composed it in response to the rise of fascism in Europe. Vaughan Williams denied this but Adrian Boult insisted that RVW “foresaw the whole thing”. Perhaps socio-political events influenced him without his being aware of it; or perhaps he was expressing “towering rages” within himself. If either of those things is true, then intuition was a driving force behind this symphony. But then, that is true of nearly all great music. Top recorded performances are conducted by Vaughan Williams in 1937, Barbirolli in 1950, Boult in 1953, Mitropoulos in 1956, Sargent in 1963, Thomson in 1987, Handley in 1990, Haitink in 1996 ***, Oundjian in 2011, Elder in 2017, Pappano in 2021.

During an interview, Alan Lomax asked early-style jazz clarinetist George Lewis whether he could read music, to which Lewis replied that people “don’t come to hear you read; they come to hear you play.” Most good musicians can play without a written score but Lewis took this idea a step further, playing in a style that a music teacher probably would consider improper. But then he wasn’t playing to be proper; he was playing to convey feeling and give enjoyment. Here is a link to his playlists. 

Andrea Motis is a young woman who sings, and plays trumpet and saxophone, all with an ease and charm. Her training is apparent but her playing and singing reveal something else: an intuitive feel for it. Here is a link to her playlists; and to live performances at Teatro Coliseum, Barcelona in 2011 at age 16; at Jamboree in Barcelona in 2013; Concierto Cierra Campamento Musical, 2018; Concert de les Festes d’Amposta, 2018; at Moods in Zurich in 2019; and naturajazz in 2021.

The pivotal moment in George Frideric Händel’s oratorio Belshazzar (1745) (approx. 162-171’) (libretto) is his vision of “the handwriting on the wall.” This is best seen as a metaphor for what we know subconsciously before it penetrates fully into consciousness. Performances are conducted by Harnoncourt, Pinnock, Schnetzler, and Jacobs.

Other works:

• Joseph Jongen, piano music: French impressionism in music.
• Vagn Holmboe, String Sinfonias I-IV, "Kairos" (Time), Op. 73 (1957-1962) (approx. 57’): “kairos” means time in a psychological sense, as we experience it, not as it is measured by a clock.
• Leonard Bernstein, Touches (1981) (approx. 9’)
• Tan Dun, Traces (1989, rev. 1992) (approx. 10’)
• Wolfgang Rihm, Jagden und Formen (Hunts and Forms) (2001) (approx. 51-62’): the title “relates to Rihm’s highly intuitive approach to composing the work”. [Gavin Dixon, Fanfare magazine, July/August 2022.]

Albums:

• Kenny Barron Trio, “Book of Intuition” (2016) (60’), displays “easy, seamless mastery”.
• William Goldstein, “Instant Composition: Continuing the Tradition of Mozart” (2016) (69’): Goldstein says: “The audiences gather from my performances that it is possible for some of us to create an actual composition with a beginning, development and end in real time . . . There aren’t many composers out there that can do this anymore.”
• Justin Chart, “Intuition” (2021) (60’)
• Steven Halpern, “Spectrum Suite” (1975) (73’): “What you won’t hear are recognizable melodies, familiar chord progressions or a continuous rhythm, as is found in most music. Indeed, it was precisely because of the unique approach to tonal composition that you are able to respond in a more healing and intuitive, rather than intellectual manner.”
• Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp, “Fruition” (2022) (59’): “The music flows naturally from their fruitful exchanges, informed by mutual listening, skill and imagination. In the span of four minutes, ideas and images follow one after the other, become distinct then disappear, the players' energies converging into a single stream which one flees from as the other diverts it in a new and unforeseen direction . . .”
• Dhafer Youssef, “Streets of Minarets” (2023) (60’): “. . . after a particularly difficult time for the oud master, the music finally revealed itself to him. With an opportunity to pick his dream band, Youssef in a reversal of his normal practice of writing the music first, hand picked the musicians and then set about rewriting the music and arrangements for the new musicians. The resulting music is astonishing and quite a departure, yet paradoxically a logical follow on from his previous albums.”
• Anna Clyne (composer), “Shorthand” (2024) (60’): “Her style seems rather instinctive, often cinematic in scope, and takes inspiration from many sources, be it poetry, painting or other music.”

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Paul Simon, “Proof” (lyrics)
• Aretha Franklin, “Think” (lyrics)
• Franz Joseph Haydn (composer), “Piercing Eyes” (lyrics)

Visual Arts

• Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting) (1994)
• Salvador Dali, Invisible Man (1929-33)

Film and Stage

• The Major and the Minor: the “girl” isn’t fooling anyone, or, the radar-like quality of hormones
• Sita Sings the Blues: a female cartoonist becomes fascinated with the character Sitafrom the Hindu folk tale “The Ramayana,” only to discover that the character’s plight mirrors her own (see the entire film here)
• Jajouka, Something Good Comes to You: (Jajouka, Quelque Chose de Bon Vient Vers Toi) this hybrid fictional and documentary film tells of the Moroccan band, Master Musicians of Jajouka, presenting “an intuitive and intricate exploration into the feeling of sound.”