“—Music hurts me. I don’t know whether I truly love it. It finds me wherever it happens to. I don’t go looking for it. I let it caress me. But these caresses are injurious. How should I say it? Music is a weeping in melodies, a remembrance in notes, a painting in sounds. I can’t rightly say. Just so no one takes my statements about art up there too seriously. They’re certain to miss the mark somewhat as not a single note has yet struck me today. There’s something missing when I don’t hear music, and when I do, then there’s really something missing. That’s the best I can say about music.”

(Robert Walser, from “Music”, from Fritz Kocher’s Essays, trans. Susan Bernofsky, p. 10 in Masquerade and Other Stories.)