As I sip my Paloma, drink of the day, the tang of grapefruit, the snap of tequila,
and the summer wind is heard more faintly,
I wonder about Scriabin's "Poem of Ecstasy" (1908).
Was it a symphony or merely a lark -- albeit one worthy of a sonnet?
If this is ecstasy, what woud be the opposite?
When I was a nervous wreck, I played Scriabin's "Poem of Ecstasy," as if he were a fellow sufferer.
One word for it is "vertiginous." Here's Henry Miller's take (in Nexus):
That Poème de l'extase? Put it on loud. His music sounds like I think – sometimes. Has that far-off cosmic itch. Divinely fouled up. All fire and air. The first time I heard it I played it over and over. (...) It was like a bath of ice, cocaine and rainbows. For weeks I went about in a trance. Something had happened to me. (...) Every time a thought seized me a little door would open inside my chest, and there, in this comfy little nest sat a bird, the sweetest, gentlest bird imaginable. 'Think it out!' he would chirp. 'Think it out to the end!' And I would, by God. Never any effort involved. Like an étude gliding off a glacier
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