beverly sills said yes. and i... >> maybe music's different. >> why would it be different, snow because the body is partly engaged in it? >> because it's so abstract, charlie. and so it's not replete with human meaning. it's like... you know that poem about spring and he says the trees are coming, like something almost being said. and i think music at its best is just something being said that's just out of your reach. so because it's not cramped by meaning perhaps it is possible to be a soprano in cosi fantutti sing thatar owe and know you've given it everything and lilt never be better. or to think there's not a single note you could change of this. you could never say that about a novel. >> but then do you think we could go to saul bellow, john updike and others, now those two dead and say if we could reach them today did you think that there was a... something was just beyond your grasp? that you knew was there? because you could look at this and say it's really, really good. but there's something. there

i remember beverly sills being asked about being on broadway. and immediately she said well, it's not an operatic experience, but it could be a very exciting theatrical a spirit. and i thought, you know, she didn't just put down that persons, the relevancy of their experience. >> well, the word borders has many implications, and certainly borders between art disciplines are very interesting and breaking down. the chinese have a multi-millennium tradition of painting poetry. one of my favorite movements, post also and brock, was robert delaunay when he started a movement autism which was intended to be involved music with painting. which is an interesting conceptualization. but there are lots of overlaps. i know just as a young person, one of the great other kinds of borders, i was a student of russian and a group of young kids pledged only to speak russian, and traveling through russia. and in a little town, in georgia, and russia, one sunday there in this group of kids that were singing and elvis presley album. and i went up to them and, speaki