Imaginary

Visual Arts

• Lucian Freud, Reflection (Self-Portrait) (1985)
• Paul Klee, Contemplation (1938)
• Giorgio de Chirico, Eternity of a Moment
• Piet Mondrian, Summer Night (Sommernacht) (1906-07)
• Mikhail Nesterov, Deep Thoughts (1900)
• Gustav Klimt, The Swamp (1900)
• Alphonse Mucha, Contemplation
• Mary Cassatt, Contemplation (1891)
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Reflection (1877)
• Pierre-Auguste Cot, A Pause for Thought, or Ophelia (1870)
• Gustave Courbet, The Reflection (1864)
• Rogier van der Weyden, Portrait of a Lady (1460)

Film and Stage

• The Clockmaker of St. Paul, (L’Horloger de Saint-Paul) about a man induced by tragedyto reflect on his life
• Life Is Sweet, “a contemplative comedy about people who aren’t”
• A Time to Live and a Time to Die: a filmmaker’s reflections on his life
• Defending Your Life: imagining what a post-mortemself-examination might be like.

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

French composer Claude Debussy wrote two books of Préludes and two books of Images for solo piano. They are thoughtful, reflective works, perfect for today’s value.

• Préludes, Book I (performances by Michelangeli, Zimerman and Cortot)
• Préludes, Book II (performances by Richter, Zimerman and Gieseking)
• Images, Book I, CD 105, L. 110 (1905) (approx. 14-16’) (performances by Birringer, Gieseking, Trifonov and François)
• Images, Book II, CD 120, L. 111 (1907) (approx. 12-15’) (performances by Birringer, Gieseking, Arrau and Zhdanov)

Other compositions:

• Ravel, Miroirs (Mirrors) (1904-1905); see also performances by Azzuro, Lortie and Bavouzet, and Rana.
• Coriglano, A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (1960, revised 1999): 1. Fern Hill; 2. Poem in October; 3. On His Birthday.
• Brahms, Clarinet Trio in A Minor, for clarinet, cello and piano, Op. 114 (1891): “. . . in their thematic and textural austerity (Brahms’ utterances) speak, even in their lighter moments, with a sobriety that tells everything about the composer’s state of world-weariness.”
• Charles Koechlin’s works for solo organ display a completive character.
• Smetana, String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor, "From My Life", JB1:105 (1876)
• At Abdel Rahman el Bacha’s hands, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier sounds like an extended reflection.
• Åberg: Organ works
• Penderecki: A Sea of Dreams Did Breathe On Me (Powiało na mnie morze snów . . .), songs of reflection and nostalgia for soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone and mixed choir and orchestra (2010)
• Smyth, The Prison, Symphony for Soprano, Bass-baritone, Chorus and Orchestra: the final monologue of a prisoner who is about to be executed, presented as a dialogue with his soul
• Alkan, 25  Préludes, Op. 31
• Satie, Gnossiennes
• Satie, 3 Sarabandes

Albums:

• Liquid Mind VII, “Reflection”
• Deuter, “San”
• Soft Works, “Abracadabra in Osaka”: “Much of the music is contemplative and is best appreciated by clearing one’s mind and letting the music take you where it may.” [Frank Kohl, review, Cadence magazine, April-June 2021]
• Ran Blake & Andrew Rathbun, “Northern Noir”
• Frank Woeste, “Pocket Rhapsody” and “Pocket Rhapsody II”
• Laura Jeppesen and Catherine Liddell, “Marais at Midnight”
• Harvey Sorgen, Joe Fonda & Marilyn Crispell, “Dreamstruck”
• Luigi di Chiappari, Riccardo di Fianda, Daniele di Pentima and Rohan Dasgupta, “Anatma”
• Jaap Blonk, “August Ananke”
• Aija Rēķe, “Latvian Reflections”: a poignant album of short works by Latvian composers
• Eberhard Weber, “Once Upon a Time: Live in Avignon”: Weber says: “Over the decades, I came to realize that I am a European. My family is European and I grew up listening to European classical music. I’m classically trained; that’s my background. So I’m not a jazz bassist – I play European improvised music'!”
• Surti singer Ustad Saami, “East Pakistan Sky”
• Ludovico Einaudi, “12 Songs from Home”. Einaudi writes about creating this album in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic: “This new release is the memory of those home live concerts, my memory of this time, the memory of a strange and new atmosphere that we won’t forget.”
• Hélène Grimaud, “Memory Echo”, remixed by Nitin Sawhney
• Tord Gustavsen Trio, “Opening”
• Nduduzo Makhathini, “Reflections”
• Bor Zuljan, “Gesualdo: Il liuto del principe”: an album of solo lute music, including several selections by  Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613)
• Geoff Eales, Dave Lee & Andy Findon “Reflections” (2011)
• Alicia Lee, “Conversations with Myself” (2022): “. . . Lee’s musical voice reaches out consistently throughout the album, presenting these pieces not as distant, unreachable gems but as tangible musical parables and narratives. Framed by Pierre Boulez’ iconic Dialogues de l’Ombre Double for clarinet and electroacoustic doppelganger, Lee shapes a program that engages with the dichotomy between dialogue and monologue.”
• Charles Mingus, “A Modern Jazz Symposium of Music and Poetry with Charles Mingus” (1957): reflections on the genesis of a career, and music to go with it. “Anyone who’s read the stream of consciousness–cleaving Beneath the Underdog: His World as Composed by Mingus knows that one of jazz’s most influential and inspiring composer-bassists, Charles Mingus, was capable of scribing the same sort of genius, stormy-weather, character-driven texts that his music verifies and validates. Also, if anyone knows well the ins and outs of that autobiography, they know how wildly fictitious and grandiose an embellishing storyteller Mingus was (was he really a pimp as he portends?).”
• Karolina Errera & Lilit Grigoryan, “Songs of Rain” (2022) (65’): “The sound of raindrops, perhaps the warm ones in the summer, can be so enjoyable, soothing, atmospheric, give space for reflection . . . For my first album, I wanted to find music that could resonate with that atmosphere, be emotional, poetic and introverted in the best way. Johannes Brahms’ Sonata op.78 — which is based on his ‘Regenlied’ or the ‘Rain Song’ op. 59 — was the initial inspiration for the repertoire to be built on the theme of Rain and Song.”
• Brian Eno, “Neroli (Thinking Music Part IV)” album (1991) (58’): “Taking a cue from the liner notes, most reviewers of Brian Eno's Neroli (1991) point out the piece's simple melodic line, its derivation from the Phrygian mode, its slowly mutating processes, and perhaps also its practical use as background music for therapy.”

Fictional Narratives

He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not a fool. The light of nature was ignited in him. Unhappiness, which also possesses a clearness of vision of its own, augmented the small amount of daylight which existed in this mind. Beneath the cudgel, beneath the chain, in the cell, in hardship, beneath the burning sun of the galleys, upon the plank bed of the convict, he withdrew into his own consciousness and meditated. He constituted himself the tribunal. He began by putting himself on trial. He recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustly punished. He admitted that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy act; that that loaf of bread would probably not have been refused to him had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have been better to wait until he could get it through compassion or through work; that it is not an unanswerable argument to say, "Can one wait when one is hungry?" That, in the first place, it is very rare for any one to die of hunger, literally; and next, that, fortunately or unfortunately, man is so constituted that he can suffer long and much, both morally and physically, without dying; that it is therefore necessary to have patience; that that would even have been better for those poor little children; that it had been an act of madness for him, a miserable, unfortunate wretch, to take society at large violently by the collar, and to imagine that one can escape from misery through theft; that that is in any case a poor door through which to escape from misery through which infamy enters; in short, that he was in the wrong. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume I – Fantine; Book Second – The Fall, Chapter VII, The Interior of Despair.]

Novels, stories and children’s books:

• Edward St. Aubyn, At Last: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012): “ . . . ‘The Patrick Melrose Novels,’ can be read as the navigational charts of a mariner desperate not to end up in the wretched harbor from which he embarked on a voyage that has led in and out of heroin addiction, alcoholism, marital infidelity and a range of behaviors for which the term ‘self-destructive’ is the mildest of euphemisms.”
• David Means, Instructions for a Funeral: Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019): “ . . . Means senses that beneath every act of violence there pulses a vein of grace, a redemptive potential yearning to be tapped.”
• Sara Pennypacker, Here in the Real World (a children’s book) (Balzer + Bray, 2020): “11-year-old Ware pushes back against the hubbub by taking a stand for silence, discovering his true calling along the way.”
• Debra Jo Immergut, You Again: A Novel (Ecco, 2020): a woman repeatedly runs into her 22-year-old self
• Yu Miri, Tokyo Ueno Station: A Novel (Riverhead, 2020): a man reflects on his life with regret
• Brenda Lozano, Loop: A Novel (Charco Press, 2021): “In This Novel, the Stream of Consciousness Is More Like a Whirlpool”.
• Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness: A Novel (Viking, 2021) “has extraordinary powers of self-reflection and self-replication. This is a Book, as well as a book. It serves as both narrator and instructor. It tells the story; it tries to teach the hero to tell his own story; and it struggles to get him and us to understand the true meaning of Books: that they are the maps of Life.”

Poetry

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes
thou lovest best,

Night, sleep, death and the stars.

[Walt Whitman, “A Clear Midnight”]

Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward,
He waited, (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
"Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure."
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it.
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing-
Too present to imagine.

[Robert Frost, “Carpe Diem”]

Books of poems:

• Olena Kalytiak Davis, Late Summer Ode: Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2022), “describes the period after ambition has waned and the kids have moved out, leaving plenty of time to reflect on your mistakes.”