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Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, and the imagination are the artists of this ‘Gnossienne bath’.My instructions for listening to and savouring this playlist are simple: prepare a bath scented with fig and lavender essential oils (the latter can be found in any good pharmacy). The bath should not be too hot. There should be a lot of foam. Start the music. Settle in. Breathe deeply as you inhale the fragrant scents. Enjoy the feeling of well-being. Let yourself go completely. Let your mind connect to the sweet rememberings of a dream, to delicious fleeting thoughts, memories of life’s happy moments… Mix all this with your imagination, inspired by Ravel and Satie's compositions. Then, only then, are you fully inhabiting your ‘Gnossienne bath’.
I'm going to tell you about the very first one I experienced, which has since become a ritual. Once immersed in the bath, listening to Erik Satie's Gnossiennes (the set of compositions that give its name to this ritual), the memory of my childhood bedroom in Guadeloupe all bathed in sunlight came to mind. Sometimes I would like to find it again as the memory is tinged with a happy nostalgia. It is hard to get enough of a good hot Gnossienne bath. Deep in our hearts it can inspire a gentle longing. It is waiting for the solitude of the room of yesteryear whilst surrounded by the white ivory monster rattling its chords and shaking its keys. The Sandman smiles and sighs. ‘These little luxuries of the spirit are precious. Despite the ravages of time and the sting of reality they will never wither.’
In my childhood bedroom I had an upright piano that made me so happy. This upright piano is the white ivory monster. As for the happy nostalgia of childhood, there's nothing more life-saving. It was in this room that I discovered Erik Satie, reveling in his ‘“Pécadilles importunes”, and Ravel with his “Miroirs” and “Jeux d’eau”. It was also in this room that I discovered Romanticism and the Romantics. Another ‘Gnossienne bath’ brought forth the following:
Ma réflexion danse et tournoie
Sur une drôle de valse
Fait mine de virevolter
Puis se laisse bercer
Par une drôle de mélopée
Délicate et enivrante
C'est un piano qui chante
Qui plonge ma réflexion
Dans l'ivresse des parfums oubliés
L'adrénaline des occasions manquées
C’est une valse romantique
Romantique et unique
(My reflection dances and swirls
In a curious waltz
Pretending to spin
And then is lulled to sleep
By a strange melody
Delicate and intoxicating
It is a piano that sings
Plunging my reflection
Into an intoxication of forgotten perfumes
The rush of missed opportunities
This waltz is romantic
Romantic and unique)
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