Make art. Make music. Survive.

Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning." – Karl Paulnack, Director, Music Division, The Boston Conservatory

"Music is the study of the relationship between invisible internal objects," writes Karl Paulnack in a essay that must be read by everyone, you. Read it. Save it. Send it to others.

Art, my friend David tells me, is at its heart an identify function. We define who we are through our art. And yet, we step back from ourselves as artists, at a very young age.

If you are alive, you are an artist. Plain and simple.

Paulnack speaks of several musical compositions in his essay; I'm featuring them here. The first, Oliver Messiasen's Quartet for the End of Time, was composed in a prisoner-of-war camp:

"One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for the prisoners and guards of the prison camp."

The second is Barber's Adagio for Strings, abut which Paulnack writes: "If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had." The version I've posted is an explosion of that form with mesmerizing electric violin.

Paulnack recounts extraordinary instances of making meaning though music, including a most moving performance of Aaron Copland's Sonata for violin and piano in a nursing home.

"I have come to understand that music is not part of 'arts and entertainment' as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds."

He exhorts the students who are beginning their careers in a way we should all take notice of. Too often we discourage our youth from being an artist: "Go get a business degree," we tell them, "and then you can make animated films in your spare time." No, no.

I must quote liberally from the essay here (emphasis mine) – it is important we all read this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do."

Perhaps we have not only a longing, but a responsibility to follow the creative spirit in all of us. It shows up in different ways, in paintings and piano notes and in the way we make our kids' lunches and in the way we put two fabrics together in our living room. Make art. Make music. Help the planet survive.