On being ill | literatuurmix
"Unless you take the air,
Like woodcock, crane, or goose.
But stop; you're not in plight
For such adventurous flight,
O'er desert waves and sands,
In search of other lands.
Hence, then, to save your precious souls,
Remaineth but to say,
'Twill be the safest way,
To chuck yourselves in holes."
Jean de La Fontaine, The Swallow and the Little Birds, transl. Elizur Wright.
In order to avoid our walls from keeping our minds cramped like De La Fontaine's little birds, we offer you the company of words and music.
Without fear of conflict of interest, Passa Porta has commissioned a series of mixtapes from its own production employee, Coline Cornélis, dj and illustrator in her actively spare time.
Coline has created for you a small thematic collection of pieces bridging music and literature - written sounds and speaking rhythms vs instrumental words and sung senses.
This second episode — you may find the first one here, inspired by the delicate theme of illness, includes readings from Virginia Woolf's On Being Ill, which tells the story of that particular experience that language can barely convey but that everyone knows, from Ravel by Jean Echenoz, a fictionalized biography that recounts the end of the great composer's life, from Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor, in which she dissects and thwarts the images carried by diseases through texts, whether medical or literary, and finally one of the poems in Lieke Marsman's De volgende scan duurt vijf minuten, a collection in which the author examines how a sick body is inevitably linked to a sick world.
Tracklist
Incantation for Tape - Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky
On Being Ill - Virginia Woolf, from Emese Csornai
第三章 瞑想 (Dark Slumber) - Geinoh Yamashirogumi
Xochiyaoyoloh - Luis Perez Ixoneztli
Illness as Metaphor - Susan Sontag, New York Institute for the Humanities (link)
Shinshunfu - Khei Amada (Sugai Ken Rework)
Etre - Nicolas Jaar
Ravel - Jean Echenoz, read by Florian Debève
Evensong - Sarah Davachi
Purple - Not Waving
De volgende scan duurt vijf minuten - Lieke Marsman, read by Tessel Veneboer
Kettering - The Antlers (lyrics)