Sometimes I’ll stay indoors for days at a time, talking to no one and doing nothing of value. Once I do go outside after a long stretch like that, it still feels fake, like some slide in front of my eyes. At a certain point, I’ll have to tell myself, “This is actually real and I am actually here. That dog or building or mountain range in the distance is a real thing inhabiting the same space that I am.” I think that must be a very modern sensation, that of having to convince oneself of reality. What a weird feeling.

A very smart and gifted friend of mine told me once that music is a kind of replacement for the natural world. That, before civilization or whatever, the world must have seemed a place of such immense wonder and confusion, so terrifying in a way, unthinkably massive and majestic. And that that feeling of mystery and amazement, is somehow hardwired into us. Once the world became commonplace, mapped, and conquered, that mystery left our common mind and we needed something to replace it with and then along came music. I think she’s right, music is magic to me, transportative and full of wonder in a way that I have trouble getting from the natural world. All the human things that make the natural world so hard to connect with just aren’t there with music.