Music has got to be useful for survival, or we would have gotten rid of it years ago.
Interpretation
Music plays a vital role in our survival and well-being, indicating its essential nature in human life.
Daniel Levitin highlights the integral role of music in human existence, suggesting that if it were not essential for our survival, it would have been discarded long ago. This implies that music is not just a form of entertainment but a crucial element that contributes to our emotional and social well-being, shaping our experiences and connections with others.
In practice
During a discussion on the importance of arts in education, this quote can emphasize how music contributes to life skills.
As soon as you hear a proposition, the creative brain in humans assumes for the moment that it's true, and starts trying to find evidence. It's what computer scientists in the old days used to call 'Fifo:' first in, first out. The first piece of information that gets in has a privileged position, even if it's misinformation.
What music is better able to do than language is to represent the complexity of human emotional states.
Information overload refers to the notion that we're trying to take in more than the brain can handle.
That walk around the block, that fresh air, is going to help you work more quickly and effectively when you get back.
There are a lot of books about how to get organized and a lot of books about how to be better and more productive at business, but I don't know of one that grounds any of these in the science.
There's an ancient connection between movement and music. Most languages don't make a distinction between the words 'music' and 'dance.' And we can see that in the brain. When people are lying perfectly still but listening to music, the neurons in the motor cortex are firing.
The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply canβt be spoken in words alone. At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.
When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.
There are those who write because they believe they have something so marvelous that it will make them famous and wealthy, a lauded commodity who will be invited to a lifetime of cocktail parties.
Fiction, I believed, was the transmutation of experiential dross into linguistic gold. Fiction meant taking up whatever the world had abandoned by the road and making something beautiful out of it.
My mother likes what I cook, but doesn't think it's French. My wife is Puerto Rican and Cuban, so I eat rice and beans. We have a place in Mexico, but people think I'm the quintessential French chef.
There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
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