Rasselas

“Gij daar die luistert met naïeviteit naar het gefluister van de fantasie, en die graag de fantomen van de hoop achtervolgt; die verwacht dat ouderdom de beloftes van de jeugd zal inlossen, en dat de tekorten van vandaag morgen zullen worden aangevuld, kom erbij en luister naar de geschiedenis van Rasselas, prins van Abyssinië.”

(eigen vertaling van)

“Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.”

(openingszin van Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759). Zie ook hier)

Today! Right now!

“He could awaken people’s… sense of who they were… and their own passions, it’s very, it’s even hard to listen to that record, there’s so much longing in it, you know, there is so much… euhm… you know there’s so much … I don’t know … I don’t know what it is … it’s just … there is there is a deep yearning for a for a … a connection to the source, that’s there, and you feel … like doing something that you never do, when you listen to music like that, it’s like: why do I live in this track? why do I, you know, wake up at the same time every morning? why why am I a creature of heaven? … you know what I mean? go do something else! today! right now!”

(Matt Johnson, Jeff Buckley’s drummer van 1993 tot 1996, in: Everbody here wants you.- BBC4 docu 2002, online, van 41.12 tot 41.55)