Choosing not to believe in the devil won’t protect you from him.
It’s so simple, so evocative. So many emotions seem to be inside of it. Yet, of course, like all music, it’s essentially not about anything. It’s just a design of pitches and silence and time. And the pitches, the notes, as you know, are just vibrations.
This fear of the unknown.
In fact, you only have to relax. Sit back…
Confusion. No connection.
There’s that connection and you can see it in the eyes.
Nothing else matter.
What’s like to be alive?
What it’s like to be alive. Now the raw material of it, of course, is just the music of everyday life. It’s all the anthems and dance crazes and ballads and marches. But what classical music does is to distill all of these musics down, to condense them to their absolute essence, and from that essence create a new language, a language that speaks very lovingly and unflinchingly about who we really are. It’s a language that’s still evolving.
What happens when the music stops? Where does it go? What’s left? What sticks with the people in the audience in the end of a performance?
Is complex and emotional and not totally understood.
The music’s powerful silent partner, the way it’s been passed on. How might that change their lives? To me this is the intimate, personal side of music. It’s the passing on part. It’s the why part of it. And to me that’s the most essential of all.
