Pushing the boundaries of my golden cage, searching for new ways of expression and freedom, unveiling the ambiguities between music and art, friendship and love – that was my summer of 1979.

The music began, passages of immense technical complexity fluidly bridging Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro with Renoir’s impressionism. The gloom and shadows of claustrophobic chambers contrasting with the vibrant radiance of a wide-open landscape. The realism of humanity down to its dirty nails and rotten wounds combined with the fleeting sanguinity of the moment.

Playing Rachmaninoff was like walking on a rope bridge across a gorge with dreamy skies above and a raging, muddy river below.

But the connection between us was in the air, growing stronger with each stroke of his brush and with every cadenza of my piano performance as we struggled to find our unique voices. He by bringing musical tonality to his painting; me by unlocking my inner sluices, letting the palette of emotions spill freely into the art of my music.

Pushing the boundaries of my golden cage, searching for new ways of expression and freedom, unveiling the ambiguities between music and art, friendship and love—that was my summer of 1979.

Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.

By the time I turned fifteen, Communism had become my religion.

That’s the power you possess as an artist. To find and express your own unique message.

The gusty wind Khazri swept through Baku, scouring every crevice, leaving behind air so pristine that it sparkled in the ginger sun like my mama’s favorite crystal vase.

Leala's breath was "like a cello sawing away against the bouncing-bow contrabasses of her heartbeat.