A SWEET PASSAGE
From the book I'm reading right now (slowly), which is I suspect an excellent book: Kafka on the Shore
, by Haruki Murakami.
The sentence at the end of this passage pretty much sums up most of my current ideas about art and its power as an analogue of we imperfect humans:
"He listens to the music, humming the melody, then continues.
'That's why I like to listen to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of--that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect....'"
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