Touching and Feeling

Must we be touched in order to feel touch? If all my nerve endings conspire to feel touched, and my brain is convinced of their information, can I not feel Her face against mine simply because Edith sings it so? I don't know what is contained in that voice, nor what spills over from it (this, surely, is the more significant question...), but when she sings - even the words I can understand, that I know have nothing to do with touching - I am touched. Something in the materiality of that voice, at the point of intersection between body and language, langue et parôle, something is there that spills over beyond my ears and onto my skin, as if it is a God of Music infiltrating my body having sneaked in through my willing ears. At this vulnerable point, plagued as I am by having had a second Exposure-And-Rejection Anxiety dream in the space of a week, at this point I can feel touched only by sound or thought. Such intangible things, they still seem to move within me, and spark my nerves into action. I am indeed a bundle of nerves, and all of them are shooting off against each other, misfiring and mixing feeling with feeling, emotion with touch. It seems all in the face, Her face against mine, in my daydreams at least, but also in the blush, the bloodrush, that painful self-exposure... Now, I am exposing my self to myself: meaning is coming from somewhere, but I cannot fathom what that meaning is, only that it is coming. If I can generate feeling without touch in this perverse way, would any real touch mean anything? As much as I am loving my single life, I long to be touched. As ridiculous as my desires are, they still rage beneath my calm exterior. And does my listening add to that rage? Does the music I choose stoke the fire, piling gritty voice on top of bandoneón, and curt syncopation on top of mourning melody as fuel? Certainly. Can I stop listening? You're joking, right?