One of the inherent consequences of reading a work as closely as I am reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is that the book will work its way into the threads of your heart--and by heart I mean paradigm, concept of the world, etc. The same goes for any artistic venture that one ponders to such a careful extent. I am devoting as much emotional engery to the Eric Roberson cd I recently purchased. As a result, it has occurred to me that there is a song on this neo-soul collection of songs that so perfectly mirrors the feelings that Anna K's lover, Vronsky, has for her. This has inspired me to make a thematic mix--The Anna Karenina "Soundtrack."

I believe that music, like mathematics, is cumulative and universal. I have enjoyed its charms across all genres and categorizations (and those categories are often blurred now). Essentially, there is something in everything that harkens back to something else. A song is a story, the manifesto of a human life. That's why I can find an R&B ballad that features the line "Back in the day, before there was love, before there was us..." and see it as it encapsulates the whole of a literary point about a woman and a man in russia, hundreds of years prior.

Am taking a break from Roberson at the moment, though, and have put in Sting. He says the following:

What is the force that binds the stars?
I wore this mask to hide my scars
What is the power that pulls the tide?
Never could find a place to hide

What moves the earth around the sun?
What could I do but run and run and run?
Afraid to love, afraid to fail
A mast without a sail

and...

I may be numberless, I may be innocent
I may know many things, I may be ignorant
Or I could ride with kings and conquer many lands
Or win this world at cards and let it slip my hands
I could be cannon food, destroyed a thousand times
Reborn as fortune's child to judge another's crimes
Or wear this pilgrim's cloak, or be a common thief
I've kept this single faith, I have but one belief

I still love you
I still want you
A thousand times these mysteries unfold themselves
Like galaxies in my head
On and on the mysteries unwind themselves
Eternities still unsaid
'Til you love me

I believe that in the landscape of "Karenina," these would be Levin's words for Kitty Scherbatsky.