Listening and the experiencing individual
Matti Itkonen
Cultural Philosopher, Essayist, Independent Scholar/Author; Adjunct Professor at Universities of Jyv?skyl?, Turku, Helsinki and Eastern Finland (UEF)
In my mind ring the words of Mika Waltari’s poem ”Youth” from the 1929 Foreign Legion collection: ”So young, so ardent I was/ how one can long for that youth/ one hungry, with profligate blood in the veins./ And the red lamps aglow, sound of violins and sax/ the sea of lights on the boulevard/ drunk in by the asphalt street.”
Words ever flowing: in them dwell time and life – those days too that have slipped away and the decades borne along in this thousand years. Ex nihilo nihil fit: out of a void nothing can spring. Thus what is now is aflood, brimming with everything that was. Here now a man of thought and a man of works set out in their dialogue in quest of the roots, the points of origin of this dawning thousand years of being. Background to all is the sound of rock – pop music to the commercial world – the ground note of lived youth. Welcome, my sharer, won’t you join me on the way?
Bibliography
Itkonen, M. 2004. Man-Boy and Dreams Lived Through. Rock Music as a Mode of Experiencing the World. Translated by R. MacGilleon. Outis: Deception. Publication of the Society for Phenomenology and Media. Volume 2, pp. 73–88.