a symphony

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...Ever since I was a child, I have had the tendency to create a fictitious world around me, to surround myself with friends and acquaintances who never existed. ( I don’t know, of course, if they didn't really exist or if it is me who doesn't exist. On such matters, as in all others, one shouldn't be dogmatic.) Ever since I became aware of the thing that I call self, I can remember with mental precision, the figures, the movements, the character and the history of several fictitious people who were, to me, as visible and mine as those things which we, perhaps abusively, call real life. This tendency, which exists since I realized that I was a self, has always been with me, modifying slightly the kind of music it uses to bewitch me but never altering its manner of bewitching.

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~ Fernando Pessoa

in a letter to his friend Casais Monteiro

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My soul is like a hidden orchestra; I do not know which instruments 

grind and play away inside of me, strings and harps, timbales and drums. 

I can only recognize myself as a symphony.

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from The Book of Disquiet

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