On Being Naive.

I just listened to Ravel’s Bolero for the first time in a long time. Somebody remarked that Bolero is unashamedly erotic. I’ve encountered that opinion before, but I never saw it that way. I heard this piece as a child, and the image I had was of representatives of all the cultures on earth, dressed in their finest national costumes, taking part in a grand sunlit procession through the streets of a city, there to sit down and celebrate being part of the human family.

That image is still with me, which I suppose proves what a case of arrested development I am.