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.
More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.
In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.
Your best work is your expression of yourself.
I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.
Writing isn't something I do, writing is something that I am. I am writing - it's just an expression of me.
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