It is so beautiful, time_is_now. I love the picture and the quote from Proust. I felt so oftne like that bird. I wish I could read more.
It was hard for me with Messiaen. There were pieces that I took to easily. They were shorter pieno pieces. Something called like exoltation and something else in the desert. I loved that piece so much. Also some birds things a pianist played was so beautiful and sweet.
Some organ pieces are easy and I loved them right away. The end of time (cello solo) is so beautiful. Sometimes students help. I have a few that are not necessarily advanced, but so responsive. I really think that classical music will live on. I used to be so pessimistic.
Even here in the middle of no where there is music and music lovers and concerts and people read and buy music books.

I wish I could read more of that beautiful thing you posted. I have students that buy books from internet. There is such a viraity of people and interests. There are money now in different countries and libraries buy a lot of books.

And your post reminded me of New York. I know people there that support and love music, met etc, go to most interesting things.
Life is so exciting (I sound like Lord Byron now).
Thank you for posting. If you are writing a book I am waiting for it. I love to read more on the subject.

Book about ghosts is interesting. Are they ghosts of passed on people? I don't know much about ghosts, but the first topic sounds interesting for me. Messiaen did not use any folk music I think. I never thought about these two composers together, but then I know little.
I like to know more about ghosts. What direction I should be thinking (what country, what period).
Some composers need a lot of promotion (in good sense).

Yes, songs of birds it is kind of natural folk melodies. I find two personalities interesting. I don't think anybody thought of these two together. They both suffered because of the war, though Messiaen did not have to leave his country.
There is nothing in common in their music is there? Personalities must be very different. Messiaen was very religious. I don't think Bartok was. Somehow I always thought Prokofiev and Bartok. But your combination is much more interesting.

On a more serious note:

'Of course, as Messiaen says, music is not the privilege of human beings: the universe, the cosmos, is made of refrains, the question in music is that of a power of deterritorialization permeating nature, animals, the elements, and deserts as much as human beings. The question is more what is not musical in human beings, and what already is musical in nature. Moreover,what Messiaen discovered in music is the same thing ethnologists discovered in animals: human beings are hardly at an advantage, except in the means of overcoding, of making punctual systems. That is even the opposite of having an advantage; through becomings-woman, -child, -animal, or -molecular, nature opposes its power, and the power of music, to the machines of human beings, the roar of factories and bombers. And it is necessary to reach that point, it is necessary for the nonmusical sound of the human being to form a block with the becoming-music of sound, for them to confront and embrace each other like two wrestlers who can no longer break free from each other's grasp, and slide down a sloping line: "Let the choirs represent the survivors . . Faintly one hears the sound of cicadas. Then the notes of a lark, followed by the mockingbird. Someone laughs . . . A woman sobs . . From a male a great shout: WE ARE LOST! A woman's voice: WE ARE SAVED! Staccato cries: Lost! Saved! Lost Saved!"

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari - A Thousand Plateaus, translated Brian Massumi (London & New York: Continuum, 2004), p. 341.