“Music is the most beautiful picture on the picture exhibition”-Report from the workshop

Report from the workshop
That time, I brought them the book “Book of the Year”, Afonso Cruz. They protested: books are stupid, books are boring. We were in a circle and everybody had to read just a single sentence aloud. They laughed at the sentences and drawings. By completing the first reading round, they wanted to read more. We have commented on associations, and they led us to memories and our experiences. With the “Book of the Year”, we played a dramatic play, and after that I asked them to extract only one word which stayed in their memory and link it with emotion and picture. And again they mumbled protests, but in five minutes they wrote this:

Music is the most beautiful picture on the picture exhibition.
The stone is the gray soul of the captive.
Egg and man are the same. In each, a tiny chick is hidden.
They followed me home after, commenting – where can one borrow such interesting books? , not all books are boring as the obligatory ones for book reports… and can they come to my home so I can read to them aloud sometimes, because nobody ever read to them before. These children are twelve years old.
This time I refrain from commenting and reflection, because I cannot even express the sadness I feel towards those little souls who wish for real experiences, and joy that remained in my soul as music, awakened by their desire.
(I am quoting Saramago)

“Now the only music was the music of the words, and they are especially written in books, discrete .. because the books that exist in the world, all together, as they say, are as the universe is, infinite …”