All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on that rare occasion when something opens from within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal private, vanishing evocations.
But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours … For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard.
-James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
