I find inspiration in a variety of sources — and such inspiration finds its way to my teaching, researching, and performing. I am lucky to be so inspired.

“Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends;

Unless some dull and favourable hand

Will whisper music to my weary spirit.” (Henry IV, 4.5.1-3), Henry IV 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera

Kate Chopin The Awakening

“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.” 
(The Tempest, 3.2.135-43)

[audio:https://www.marissasilverman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/02-Voiles.mp3]

Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost

Face the Music

                      

“If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! it had a dying fall:

O! it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour.” 
(Twelfth Night, 1.1.1-7)