Music and human survival

I just came across this quote:

I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we cannot with our minds.

from a welcome address by Karl Paulnack of the Mankato Symphony Orchestra in Mankate, Minnesota. I highly recommend that you take a minute, when you have a minute, to read the entire address. I will be late for work because I did this!

But I am struck by the power, the beauty, and the truth of music. And, I think that this address represents a turning point for me in how I view music in my life.

I will soon be posting a review of a book about a homeless schizophrenic man whose only real anchor to beauty and sanity is music. The book is "The Soloist". I think that his story captures a truth that we can all recognize. By a very strange coincidence, I stumbled across this quote just now, and the truth of it struck me even before I read the entire address. Once I did, I realized that music can not be peripheral in life... Which is GREAT!!! I now have a good excuse to move what was once labelled "Art and Entertainment" into center stage!!!

Happy Tuesday!!