But the connection between us was in the air, growing stronger with each stroke of his brush and with every cadenza of my piano performance as we struggled to find our unique voices. He by bringing musical tonality to his painting; me by unlocking my...
Pushing the boundaries of my golden cage, searching for new ways of expression and freedom, unveiling the ambiguities between music and art, friendship and love—that was my summer of 1979.
How easy to be free. How strong we are when we have nothing to lose.
By the time I turned fifteen, Communism had become my religion.
Evil tempts every soul, but a weak soul tempts evil.
My eyes still swelled with tears, but my heart was dancing the lazgi.
Once upon a time, when the evil spirit of darkness reigned over the Land of Azerbaijan, hiding the sun inside his underground caves, When the orphan sky peered at the Caucasus Mountains from the black dome of sorrow, When the rain shed its tears of i...
Something flickered in the distance, dressing the darkness in a soft veil of blue. Out of the blue came an explosion of sounds followed by the seamlessly expressed melancholy of Chopin’s “Ballade no. 1.
I desire to know you. Every breath of your heart, every fleeting look on your face, the rhythm of your joys, and the melancholy of your sorrows.
Destiny is a stubborn maiden. She likes herself just the way she is.
Music is not in the notes but in what is between them.
My fingers traced the melody on an invisible keyboard—my usual way to connect with the music, to feel its emotions on my fingertips. I touched the keys softly, as if gliding my hands through water, but the musical notes kept slipping between my fin...
Jealousy knows neither morality nor empathy.
The external evils are nothing compared to the evils that we harbor in our souls.
A knife wound heals, but a tongue wound festers.
The music began, passages of immense technical complexity fluidly bridging Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro with Renoir’s impressionism. The gloom and shadows of claustrophobic chambers contrasting with the vibrant radiance of a wide-open landscape. The ...
The hurt is the place where the music enters you.
Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.
