The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “music”

Nothing Is Fixed: James Baldwin on Keeping the Light Alive Amid the Entropic Darkness of Being, Set to Music
Nothing Is Fixed: James Baldwin on Keeping the Light Alive Amid the Entropic Darkness of Being, Set to Music

“The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

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Bach and the Cosmos of Belonging: Michael Pollan on the Medicinal Power of Music
Bach and the Cosmos of Belonging: Michael Pollan on the Medicinal Power of Music

“Opened to the music, I became first the strings… and then the breeze of sound flowing past as it crossed the lips of the instrument and went out to meet the world, beginning its lonely transit of the universe.”

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Rachel Carson’s Birdsong Notation, Set to Music
Rachel Carson’s Birdsong Notation, Set to Music

A melodic homage to the patron saint of the modern environmental conscience.

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Regina Spektor Reads “The Everyday Enchantment of Music” by Mark Strand
Regina Spektor Reads “The Everyday Enchantment of Music” by Mark Strand

“A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music.”

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Margaret Fuller on the Power of Music
Margaret Fuller on the Power of Music

“All truth is comprised in music and mathematics.”

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Kierkegaard on the Spiritual and Sensual Power of Music, the Essence of Genius, and the Key to a Timeless Work of Art
Kierkegaard on the Spiritual and Sensual Power of Music, the Essence of Genius, and the Key to a Timeless Work of Art

“If Mozart ever became wholly comprehensible to me, he would for the first time become wholly incomprehensible to me.”

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The Shape of Music: Maurice Sendak’s Insightful Forgotten Meditation on Fantasy, Feeling, and the Key to Great Storytelling
The Shape of Music: Maurice Sendak’s Insightful Forgotten Meditation on Fantasy, Feeling, and the Key to Great Storytelling

“Fantasy and feeling lie deeper than words… and both demand a more profound, more biological expression, the primitive expression of music.”

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Music, Feeling, and Transcendence: Nick Cave on AI, Awe, and the Splendor of Our Human Limitations
Music, Feeling, and Transcendence: Nick Cave on AI, Awe, and the Splendor of Our Human Limitations

“What a great song makes us feel is a sense of awe… A sense of awe is almost exclusively predicated on our limitations as human beings. It is entirely to do with our audacity as humans to reach beyond our potential.”

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The Heartening Illustrated Story of How Blues Pioneer Muddy Waters Transmuted Loss and Loneliness into Music That Changed History
The Heartening Illustrated Story of How Blues Pioneer Muddy Waters Transmuted Loss and Loneliness into Music That Changed History

“The guitar howled like a wolf: powerful, lonely, and proud.”

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Walt Whitman on Beethoven and Music as the Profoundest Expression of Nature
Walt Whitman on Beethoven and Music as the Profoundest Expression of Nature

In praise of the “dainty abandon” that awakens us to wonder and carries us outside ourselves.

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