Mario on his love for Music
With music… honestly, I found a reason to keep going. I don’t know what would have happened without it. I don’t even know what kind of person I would have become—definitely someone else. And by music I mean classical music in particular, because classical is truly… something else. And now, unfortunately, everyone can listen to it for free, whenever they want, repeat it endlessly, but it takes you away from all the trash that’s coming out these days.
As for how music started with me—well, at first, the very first thing I heard was Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” But that wasn’t what made me obsessed, as they say. What actually made me obsessed—I’ll send it to you now—is Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op. posth., number 20. It’s by Chopin, and they call it “posthumous,” meaning it was published after he died.
There’s a quote I just remembered now by Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of the legends of Russian music, just like Tchaikovsky. The quote says: “Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime isn’t enough for music.” Just to see how vast this world is… the world of music is truly incredibly vast. I say it’s as big as the universe—so big that it never ends, never ends. Especially the realm of classical music, because if you look today, all the foundations of modern music are built on the basics of the old classical music.
Anyway, yes—music is such a vast thing, it never ends. Whether you start at age 10 or at age 80, you’ll never finish it and you’ll never grasp more than a drop in the ocean of music. That’s how wide it is.
Ségolène Ragu
Ségolène Ragu is a French-Lebanese photographer based in Beirut. Her long-term projects explore youth, the memory of places, and how crises and war shape everyday life in Lebanon.
- Ségolène Ragu
- Ségolène Ragu
