Re: HOW SWEET IT IS

schlomo · ‎08-25-2021

How Sweet it is

Yesterday afternoon while I was having lunch at the Waikiki Elks Club, I had a sharp pain in my chest that I attributed to the usual suspects, muscle strain, indigestion, or dehydration. Just at that moment, I heard exquisite vocalized background music, a soothing, enchanting, entrancing melody that intimately spoke to me. It was profoundly moving so much so that if I was actually having a heart attack, what a gloriously alluring way to go. The beckoning song ever so slowly receded, as did the pain in my chest. In my altered state, I would have preferred the pain to continue as long as I could still be enveloped by the seductive music. The piped-in-songs before and after the one that had overwhelmed me were so blah and uninspiring that I thought for a moment that I had a beatific auditory hallucination in between them.

Perhaps that is what John Keats in his narcotic “Ode to a Nightingale” experienced as he reflects on how “easeful Death” enticed him through the “plaintive notes” of the nightingale: “Was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?”

schlomo