Reminiscenza

This music has been with me for quite a while, waiting to be listened to with/through my eyes..

Its opening theme comes back several times, and each time, one has the sensation that much has happened before, while possibly experiencing what T.S. Eliot expressed so well thus:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate. . .

— Little Gidding V, Four Quartets (1943)

Montréal (where I live) is blessed with numerous exceptional musicians and amongst them, Marc-André Hamelin truly shines. His interpretation of this music (Nikolai Medtner's ""Forgotten Melodies", Op. 38: I. Sonata-Reminiscenza in a Minor: Allegretto tranquillo) is unforgettable, haunting (I suspect its theme will stick in many viewers' mind for a long time to come, it has now for me acquired the status of "la petite phrase de Vinteuil").

I had some idea of where I was going to take this sketch, but as is so often the case, and even more so this time, it took a life of its own right from the very beginning, once again demonstrating (to me) the truth in Picasso's "What saved me is that I became more interested in what I found than in what I was looking for."
I perceive these visuals as a prime example of images that are "digital," images that I would never have done had I remained in the world of natural media (which, for health reasons, I had to abandon, after several decades of dedicated work). Most of my digital work owes a lot to my (former) life as a painter, much of my digital images, animated or not, could be done, given time, with oils on canvas (for example), but not so with the images of this sketch.

More info about Nikolai Medtner here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Medtner

Marc-André Hamelin's web site: http://www.marcandrehamelin.com/