A kind of release

Finally, I'm not now trying to scale the heights with my experience, I'm trying to comprehend it.

Norman Mailer reflecting on The Castle in the Forest on KCRW's snug in the cosmopolis Bookworm.

Perhaps I see it as a metaphor for the dilemma of all men: necessity whose bars we look through and try not to see. Social injustice, apathy, ignorance. The personal prison of entrapment in past experience, guilt, obsession - the somewhat blind or blinded self, in other words. A man has to construct, invent, his freedom. Imagination helps. A truly great man or woman extends it for others in the process of creating his/her own.

Bernard Malamud on the prison motif within the creation of “the human sentence”.

I think about Jandek often. That there are so many albums to which to listen. That his first recording came out in 1978, and seems the outcome of a lengthy process. Dozens of recordings. Experiments. Working out how to play, and how to record. Sending out a few demos and then, finally, deciding to record by himself, all alone, and release his work by himself, all alone, dependent on no one. And how good his records sound! How perfect they sound! Put anything next to them and they sound fake. [..] On his 45th album - revealed, suddenly: he plays piano. And sings in a new way, half speaking. I admit that this, for me, is the most moving of his albums, especially in its cumulative force. It's 80 minutes or so long, and when it ends, great cheers from the crowd, and from me, too, inwardly. Great cheers, and a kind of release. This is divine music. This is the music of God.

Spurious is back, this time on the enigma of Jandek.