Imaginary

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, with regret, on his life.
• 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.”

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

French composer Claude Debussy wrote two books of Préludes (approx. 74-86’), and two books of Images (approx. 26-31’) for solo piano. Thoughtful and reflective, these works evoke French Impressionist painting, which was popular when he composed them. “Incubated in Impressionism in the visual arts and the Symbolist movement in literature, Debussy was alert to the intoxicating interplay of words and images. ‘I am almost as fond of pictures as I am of music,’ he wrote.” “The Preludes present us not so much with a chain of pieces linked in content and demanding to be rendered in the order in which they appear, but rather with a collection of single pieces of very different origin and character.” “. . . Debussy must have felt that a picture, at least an important one, expressed that which lay beyond the obvious and communicated to the observer that which is intangible and 'inexpressible.'”

• Préludes, Book I (1909-1910) (approx. 39-45’): Great recorded performances are by Walter Gieseking in 1938, Monique Haas in 1963, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in 1978, Claudio Arrau in 1980, Krystian Zimerman in 1994, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet in 1996.
• Préludes, Book II (1912-1913) (approx. 33-41’): Great recorded performances are by Walter Gieseking in 1939, Monique Haas in 1963, Claudio Arrau in 1980, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in 1988, Krystian Zimerman in 1994, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet in 1996.
• Images, Book I, CD 105, L. 110 (1905) (approx. 14-16’): Great recorded performances are by Walter Gieseking in 1953, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in 1962, Books I and II, Pascal Rogé in 1980, Claudio Arrau in 1981, Zoltán Kocsis in 1990, and Simon Trpčeski in 2010.
• Images, Book II, CD 120, L. 111 (1907) (approx. 12-15’): Great recorded performances are by Walter Gieseking in 1953, Pascal Rogé in 1980, Claudio Arrau in 1981, Zoltán Kocsis in 1990, and Simon Trpčeski in 2010.

Maurice Ravel, Miroirs (Mirrors), M. 43 (1904-1905) (approx. 22-29’), has been called “Reflections on the Nature of Reality”. Years after their composition, Ravel “wrote that Miroirs was inspired by a quotation from Shakespeare: 'The eye sees itself not, but by reflection, by some other things.'” Excellent performances are by Walter Gieseking in 1952, Sviatoslav Richter in 1965, Jean-Yves Thibaudet in 1991, Frederic Chiù in 1995, Steven Osborne in 2000, Louis Lortie in 2003, Herbert Schuch in 2006, Alexandre Tharaud in 2007, Anna Vinnitskaya in 2011, Bertrand Chamayou in 2016, Fanny Azzuro in 2017, Julien Brocal in 2018, Beatrice Rana in 2019, Michael Brown in 2020, François-Xavier Poizat in 2024, and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet in 2025.

Other compositions:

• John Coriglano, A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (1960, revised 1999) (approx. 67’): “Having already set Thomas’s Fern Hill, then Poem on his Birthday, Corigliano chose Poem in October, to balance his reflection on the three ages of man.”
• Johannes Brahms, Clarinet Trio in A Minor, for clarinet, cello and piano, Op. 114 (1891) (approx. 24’): “. . . 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 contemplative character.
• Bedřich Smetana, String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor, "From My Life" (Z mého zivota), JB1:105 (1876) (approx. 27-31’) “is written purposely for four instruments, as though in a small friendly circle they are discussing among themselves what so obviously troubles me.” [the composer]
• At Abdel Rahman el Bacha’s hands, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, sounds like an extended reflection.
• Thomas Åberg, Organ works
• Krysztof Penderecki, A Sea of Dreams Did Breathe On Me (Powiało na mnie morze snów . . .) (2010) (approx. 56’) presents songs of reflection and nostalgia for soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone and mixed choir and orchestra. “The individual songs, settings of both Romantic and contemporary Polish poetry, are grouped into larger movements and chart a progression from an almost impressionistic lightness to monumentality, the expressive tenor of the music ranging widely—nostalgic for loss, but also tense and impassioned.”
• Ethel Smyth, The Prison, Symphony for Soprano, Bass-baritone, Chorus and Orchestra (1930) (approx. 64’) centers on the gloomy ruminations of a prisoner considering the end of his life, and his soul, which is guiding him toward peace.
• Charles-Valentin Alkan, 25 Préludes, Op. 31 (1844) (approx. 59-68’): “For the most part, this is Alkan in subdued, contemplative and (often) experimental mode.”
• Erik Satie, Six Gnossiennes (1893) (approx. 15-18’) “were radical for their time in that they were written free form without time signatures or bar lines . . . and lack conventional performance directions. Instead, the scores are littered with curious aphoristic comments such as ‘Du bout de la pensée’ (‘With the tip of your thought’), ‘Munissez-vous de clairvoyance’ (‘arm yourself with clairvoyance’) or ‘Ouvrez la tête’ (‘open the head’) . . . Without formal directions, the pianist is liberated to experiment with and explore to create his/her own interpretation of this music . . .”
• Satie, 3 Sarabandes (1887) (approx 15-18’)
• George Crumb, Processional (1984) (approx. 11-13’): “Recalling Debussy’s description of his Images for piano, Crumb characterizes Processional as ‘an experiment in harmonic chemistry’. The piece is tonal, with a skilful blending of whole-tone, chromatic and modal elements.”
• Đuro Živković, I Shall Contemplate (2011, rev. 2019) (approx. 12’)

Radu Lupu was a classical pianist noted for his reflective style of playing. “He said that the sounds came not from his fingers but his mind and it is perhaps this ability to 'imagine the sound', combined with the sense of someone who had spent years thinking about the music and living with it, which made his playing so compelling.” One reviewer called his playing “radiant, inward and bewitching”. Here is a link to his playlists. 

Albums:

• Liquid Mind VII, “Reflection” (2004) (59’)
• Deuter, “San” (1985) (51’): “The smooth atmospheres are suitable for meditation, massage, relaxation and introspection.”
• Soft Works, “Abracadabra in Osaka” (2003) (60’): “Much of the music is contemplative and is best appreciated by clearing one’s mind and letting the music take you where it may.”
• Ran Blake & Andrew Rathbun, “Northern Noir” (2020) (55’)
• Frank Woeste, “Pocket Rhapsody” (2016) (55’) [“This is an album that progresses by way of small highlights to create its overall effect . . .”] and “Pocket Rhapsody II” (2020) (47’)
• Laura Jeppesen & Catherine Liddell, “Marais at Midnight” (2021) (64’)
• Harvey Sorgen, Joe Fonda & Marilyn Crispell, “Dreamstruck” (2017) (57’)
• Jaap Blonk, “August Ananke” (2014) (66’)
• Aija Rēķe, “Latvian Reflections” (2021) (52’): a poignant album of short works by Latvian composers
• Eberhard Weber, “Once Upon a Time: Live in Avignon” (2021) (46’): 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” (2021) (36’): “. . . an intentional listen with Saami’s vocals accompanied by droning harmonium, tanpura and tablas.”
• Ludovico Einaudi, “12 Songs from Home” (2020) (70’). 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 (2019) (27’)
• Tord Gustavsen Trio, “Opening” (2022) (49’): “. . . densely atmospheric and hauntingly beautiful . . .”
• Nduduzo Makhathini, “Reflections” (2017) (44’)
• Bor Zuljan, “Gesualdo: Il liuto del principe” (2022) (68’): an album of solo lute music, including several selections by Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613): “. . . Bor Zuljan explores the archlute's kaleidoscopic range of sonorities as he imagines the soundworld of composer Carlo Gesualdo, Principe di Venosa.”
• ELF Trio (Geoff Eales, Dave Lee & Andy Findon), “Reflections” (2011) (78’): “. . . the overall feel, inevitably given the horn-flute-piano configuration, is pastoral-classical . . .”
• Alicia Lee, “Conversations with Myself” (2022) (51’): “. . . 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) (35’): 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.”
• Annasara (Annasara Lundgren), “Dear Body” (2022) (27’): “The different moods and soundscapes of the songs propel the story forward painting a complex picture of pain interspersed with playful simplicity and quiet poetry.”
• David Murphy, “Ciumhne Ghlinn: Explorations in Irish Music for Pedal Steel Guitar” (2024) (39’): “For his debut album, Irish-based multi-instrumentalist David Murphy has reimagined old Irish harp tunes and arranged them for pedal steel, with accompaniments from a host of musicians and instruments. On songs like the lovely traditional waltz Cití na g Cumann, the moist, dreamlike sound of the pedal steel is joined by reverb hit bowed strings by Laura McFadden and Steve Wickham, plus plucked harp by Alannah Thornburgh and subtle piano from Rory McCarthy, giving the sweet melody layers and textures that never threaten to detract from the spirit of the tune.”
• Alice Zawadzki, Fred Thomas & Misha Mullov-Abbado, “Za Górami” (2024) (54’) “is an enticing yet resolutely high-toned survey of songs from varying traditions, including the lost language of Sephardic jews, Ladino. The source material’s collection together under the heading of Za Górami whose meaning changes, says a note by the musicians, between the more literal – ‘behind the mountains’ – to the more metaphoric, something like ‘once upon a time…’, reveals a deep well of folk-inspired music and poetic lyrics that is drawn upon to create original interpretations that fit the ECM imprimatur like a glove.”
• Bertrand Chamayou, “Letters to Erik Satie” (2023) (70’): “The programming speaks to how Cage regarded Satie as an inspiration.”
• Pat Metheny, “Moon Dial” (2024) (61’): “. . . Metheny describes the album as having an overall vibe of ‘intense contemplation’ and being ‘a dusk-to-sunrise record, hard-core mellow.’ Lyrical, nuanced and beautiful, as lovely as a flower, it is designed to make ears smile.”
• Avishai Cohen, “Into the Silence” (2016) (53’) is “dedicated to the memory of his late father.”

Music: songs and other short pieces

• The Beatles, “The Long and Winding Road” (lyrics)
• Bruce Springsteen, “The River” (lyrics)
• Pearl Jam, “Just Breathe” (lyrics)
• Charles Aznavour, “Yesterday When I Was Young” (lyrics)

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.