Video for the End of Time

In the summer of 2006 I was covering the war in Lebanon for a news channel. On day on a TV station they played The Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen, I decided to videotape it from the screen.
Between three and four in the morning, the
awakening of birds, a solo blackbird or
nightingale improvises, surrounded by a
shimmer of sound, and by a halo of trills lost
very high in the trees. A long phrase on the
cello, infinitely slow, magnifies with love
and reverence the eternity of this powerful
and gentle word, “which the years can never
efface”. Clarinet solo. The abyss is time,
with its sorrows and its weariness. The birds
are the opposite of time. They are our desire
for light, for stars, for rainbows and joyful
songs! I know nothing has ever lasted but the
gaze into which it all burns.
I know nothing has ever escaped the burning.