With my rent miraculously taken care of, my life went deeply inward. I hardly spoke for over a year. Many visitors came, sat in silence, and left. Sometimes I spoke, but mostly I did not. The unwritten rule seemed to be that I would not speak out of discomfort or fear of silence. I would speak only when I felt that somehow a compassionate word might help someone I was with. Fasting, silence, and reading defined my life for several years... I didn't know if I was giving myself to foolishness or saintliness.
I have never written the music that was in my heart to write; perhaps I never shall
with this brain and these fingers, but I know that hereafter it will be written: when, instead of these few inlets of the senses through which we now secure impressions from all without, there shall be a flood of impressions from all sides; and instead of these few tones of our little octave there shall be an infinite score of harmonies -- for I feel it, I am sure of it. This world of music, whose borders even now I have scarcely entered, is a reality, is immortal.
