My mind is curiously alert; it's as though my skull had a thousand mirrors inside it. My nerves are taut, vibrant! the notes are like glass balls dancing on a million jets of water. I've never been to a concert before on such an empty belly. Nothing escapes me, not even the tiniest pin falling. It's as though I had no clothes on and every pore of my body was a window and all the windows open and the light flooding my gizzards. I can feel the light curving under the vault of my ribs and my ribs hang there over a hollow nave trembling with reverberations. How long this lasts I have no idea; I have lost all sense of time and place. After what seems like an eternity there follows an interval of semiconsciousness balanced by such a calm that I feel a great lake inside me, a lake of iridescent sheen, cool as jelly; and over this lake, rising in great swooping spirals, there emerge flocks of birds of passage with long slim legs and brilliant plumage. Flock after flock surge up from the cool, still surface of the lake and, passing under my clavicles, lose themselves in the white sea of space. And then slowly, very slowly, as if an old woman in a white cap were going the rounds of my body, slowly the windows are closed and my organs drop back into place. . Henry Miller
About This Quote

In this quotation, William Blake is speaking of his perception of the world through his dreams. If we assume that William Blake was a raving lunatic, we can assume that the words in the poem are not intended to be taken at face value. Instead, they can be interpreted as a metaphor for Blake’s experience of the world. In the same way that a piece of music is created by the interaction between performer and audience, so too it can be said that the world is created by human perception and interaction.

The mind is complicated and the mind has many facets. We perceive things in different ways and it can be said that these different perceptions create different aspects of reality.

Source: Tropic Of Cancer

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  1. Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. - Frank Zappa
  2. Music is. .. A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy - Ludwig Van Beethoven
  3. Philosophy is the highest music. - Plato
  4. Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul. - Plato
  5. The truth is, going against the internal stream of ignorance is way more rebellious than trying to start some sort of cultural revolution. - Noah Levine
More Quotes By Henry Miller
  1. What's a fuck when what I want is love?
  2. Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.
  3. Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
  4. The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
  5. Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.
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