{"code":"music","collection_type":"theme","subroute":"music","title":"The Mystery of Music","header_1":"The Mystery of Music","header_2":"Bursts of musical colour.","description":"A collection of short stories on music. Read or download. Clark Ashton Smith, Aldous Huxley, Aleksandr I. Kuprin and H. P. Lovecraft.","has_text":true,"quote":{"quote":"“But only the blackness of space illimitable; unimagined space alive with motion and music, and having no semblance to anything on earth.” * The Music of Erich Zann","code":"the-music-of-erich-zann"},"image":true,"image_alt":"A pencil sketch of a violin.","image_filter":"grayscale() contrast(2.5)","image_title":"The Music of Erich Zann - Sketch","image_code":"the-music-of-erich-zann","stories":[{"story":"the-city-of-the-singing-flame","description":"Music draws us in without us knowing why. It motivates us, relaxes us, inspires us and saddens us based on rules that few of us can master and none of us fully understand. Clark Ashton Smith threads these concepts through his eerie story and reminds us of their power.\nIn *The City of the Singing Flame*, Phillip Hastane reads the diary of an author who has disappeared off the face of the Earth. The journal describes the author accidentally discovering an alien land in which a mysterious music in the air draws him to towards a giant column of flame."},{"story":"the-bookshop","description":"Perhaps the only thing worse than a life devoid of the enchanting mysteries such as music is the horror of seeing it debased and co-opted for some lowly purpose. Be it artists strong-armed into turning their talents towards propaganda, beautiful architecture torn down to build parking lots, or music played for a quick profit. \n*The Bookshop* presents a little store as a vestige of literature and music in a flat and unappreciative modern world, but worn down by the outside even this glimpse is strangled into submission and forced to sell itself out for a few coins."},{"story":"the-old-city-of-marseilles","description":"Like a lethargic lion in a zoo, music loses its majesty when chained down and is best seen out in the wild. The same song found to be invigorating at a mysterious bar or when played by a strange man on the street may feel colourless when played on demand by a machine at your house.\n*The Old City of Marseilles* depicts the experiences of music and revelry hidden away in a city that only someone with patience and luck can find, while a rich man with all the power in the world cannot. An old man, for example, picks up a guitar in a tavern and lights up the room with a single song, only to disappear nameless thereafter."},{"story":"the-music-of-erich-zann","description":"The mysterious power of music is unknown and unlimited. Perhaps it is above being deconstructed by physics and biology forever. We may ask: why do we participate in it, what is it for? But whether we will ever know the answers or not, now is the time to take advantage of its strange potential.\n*The Music of Erich Zann* imagines the forces of music as a truly fantastical power. Capable of being a rare weapon against even eldritch monsters. In the story, a students hears a man playing music in the attic above his room, and after investigation learns of a paranormal war taking place in which the neighbour’s violin is a vital instrument."}]}