The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker

I’m sure Disney has got story board artists working day and night on Mi Mi’s wardrobe and action scenes.

This was a great fairy tale.!    

   The themes are classic.

      Two misfits, struggling through life,

   until one day, they meet,

      and fall in Love.!

Siegfried faces his ultimate challenge when he follows a birdsong to find the sleeping Brunnhilde whom fate has destined Siegfried to awaken and fall in love with.   

No.!, that was another German fairy tale. 

But alas, destiny dictates directions,

   along their separate paths.

Each is bound by familial duty for half a century:  he to find fame and fortune in America; she to raise their love child     in their impoverished town in Burma.

Yet, they meet for one final moment   in  death.

The smoke from their pyres joining together, rising to the heavens.

This is a tale worthy of inclusion in the Arabian 1001 Nights.

As we Americans have Faulkner and Hemmingway, whose style and essence many writers try to incorporate, Germans have Kafka and Hesse.  These four are the sort of writers to whom you can apply the suffix, -esque.

In Sendker’s case, he’s going for a pinch of Siddhartha and a whiff of The Glass Bead Game.  I heard an NPR program on the lure of theosophy around Hesse’s time. 

It was a discussion of Michelle Goldberg’s book, The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West.[1]

The “Heartbeats” content is perfect for a graphics film, like with Ariel and the Sea, or Beauty & the Beast, maybe Aladdin and Jabbar.  I watched and loved them all – I’m sure I’ll love this one too.

---

[1] Here’s NPR’s discussion of The Goddess Pose