Alan: Humans would wisely acknowledge the overarching importance of creativity generally - and music-making specifically.
Note well. Putting "first things first" does not devalue any other human activity.
At "ground level," agriculture is humankind's most important function, followed by building, healing and teaching.
But we are here, essentially, to create resonance, melody, rhythm and harmony, not just with instruments but with our lives as well. Music making (and music-listening) are the best templates for learning to embody these four "musical" qualities throughout our personal lives, our communites and our institutional offspring.
Only by "putting first things first" (... and it begs mention that the literal meaning of "principle" is "first thing"...) will all other human enterprise be fully fostered, enriched and incarnated.
And just as "a tree falling in a forest" (with no one there to hear it) does not make a sound (which, by definition, requires "interpretation of vibration" through an auditory sensory apparatus), so too music does not exist -- at least not in its fullness -- until someone other than the composer/musician "hears" it.
Music is made on a two-way street.
And just as "a tree falling in a forest" (with no one there to hear it) does not make a sound (which, by definition, requires "interpretation of vibration" through an auditory sensory apparatus), so too music does not exist -- at least not in its fullness -- until someone other than the composer/musician "hears" it.
Music is made on a two-way street.
It is crucial that we stop being apologetic for The Arts as if they were "pretty" afterthoughts - superficial adornments on The Tree of Life.
The Arts - culminating with music -- comprise the essence of thought in itself; thought raised above "the practical" (as critically important as "the practical" may be); thought uplifted to its own uniquely transcendent domain, a realm so "magical" and "mystical" that the central mystery of music has always defied definition.
Like deity itself -- and perhaps because music is ineffably divine -- it is the indescribable culmination of human activity and human aspiration, a generative thrust that propels us (according to traditional metaphor) into The Music of The Spheres, the music made by The Universe itself.
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