...of immersion

The event the poet and I staged was a success. He spoke about Granada, for example - this was one of our numbers - conjuring the orgy of water the Arabs had created in the Alhambra to make up for what they lacked in the desert; he spoke of the moon as a burnished scimitar, and before his words had come to an end he turned to me and I began playing "Granada," the serenade by Albeniz. Though both numbers were of interest and referred to the same city, the mystery the medium, and the "silence" from which each emerged was different, as literature and the cinema are different even when they have the same plot and make the same logical connections. But the people who attended this performance enjoyed the idea of this external coordination between poetry and music, and must have thought they were thus amassing a greater quantity of knowledge about Granada. They neither spoke nor applauded during these moments - we performed the two numbers without interruption - and it charmed me to see them given over to their "silence." When, in passing from literature to music, they all turned their heads the other way, they looked like sleepers changing position.

[The New House from Lands of Memory, Hernandez, F.]