WHAT IS MUSIC

Music is a kiss. Music is a smirk. Music is an anthem, an insurrection, an overthrown king. Music is the star and the tree stump; the transit train and the impromptu dance; the valedictorian and the prom queen and the klutz; the ocean, the heartbeat, the injury, the end of things. Music is question, resolution, parenthesis. Music is flattery and offense; proof and error; proposition and sexual desire and rejection and mockery and violence. Music is creation and de-creation; it is midnight and twenty-two past ten; it is ineffable inspiration and a hand in front of your face.

Music is an ancient sonic artform and the aesthetically agreeable organization of a thing that resists all attempts to hold it. Nowadays we store and transmit what we think is music using concrete tangible stuff like paper and computers. But when we do that, what we store and transmit is not music; it is something else. Music is an artful manipulation of this wind-like thing that we experience as presence but that passes away and that attacks only to decay moments later. Music cannot be not stored or transmitted via noteheads or on hard drives, but it can be iterated in memories and echoes and impassioned improvised retellings. Music is the artful organization of a thing we cannot control because the thing, like this life we are living, is impermanent, non-reversible, non-repeatable, dying.