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Classical Music and Classic Cars - La Folie des Grandeurs Chantilly Arts & Elegance 2024 - Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts' Club French Section

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Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli with his Ferrari 330 GT 2+ 2  Coupé  (1964-1965) No doubt he bought a 2+2 to accommodate his fearless pupils! Writing this post is difficult in the wake of the horrors, the triumph of Nature's power and the murderous wars unforgivably created by man  now taking place throughout the world. This activity of mine seems essentially cosmetic, verging on the insignificant and possibly indulgent. However, we must somehow continue to live with some degree of optimism, hope and continue to move forward creatively with love, even with humour, however unrealistic or perverse that may sound just now. One must somehow make the most of the hand of cards that the  lottery of life has dealt us as individuals. Classical music is a consolation certainly but does not exhaustively redeem .... This post is not exclusively about Chopin and music in Poland  (although he was driven around Paris in the finest, stylish carriages and horses of the day). ...
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The Last Days of the Round Reading Room at the British Museum and the British Library - and a Pleasant Encounter

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Another wave of nostalgia breaks over me as I pick up a forgotten book that influenced my past thinking in many ways, Colin Wilson's remarkable and increasingly relevant 'The Outsider' , written in the Round Reading Room of the British Museum. Too poor to rent a room, he slept at night in a sleeping bag on Hampstead Heath in London. He spent his days reading and writing in that intellectual domain,  searching for the nature of a more permanent heightened reality above the banality of everyday life.  N ostalgia has been sweeping over me recently for past excitements, well submerging me really, as I contemplate republishing a few of my books in foreign language editions.     In December 2024 I again decided to visit the British Museum to see the outstanding  Silk Roads Exhibition.  Of course I decided to once again enter my library meta-universe as my entire life and creeping age appears to have become a museum object in itself. ...
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