The possible answers: the present, listening to people and hearing what they mean, breathing, the pause, the silence, the impulses, the consequences, the tunnel I was getting in, not realizing I was that long dark corridor, the time, the good advice, the false one, that attention to details make no sense if you are not living in them.
Do not want, Lídia, to build in the ‘space What future figures, or promise you Tomorrow. Fulfill yourself today, not ‘waiting. You yourself are your life. Do not be destined, you are not future. Who knows if, between the cup you empty, And she’s filled up again, no luck Interposes the abyss?
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Não queiras, Lídia, edificar no espaço Que figuras futuro, ou prometer-te Amanhã. Cumpre-te hoje, não esperando. Tu mesma és tua vida. Não te destines, que não és futura. Quem sabe se, entre a taça que esvazias, E ela de novo enchida, não te a sorte Interpõe o abismo?
“In any case, there was only one tunnel, dark and lonely, mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my whole life. And in one of those transparent lengths of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had gullibly believed that she was traveling another tunnel parallel to mine, when in reality she belonged to the broad world, to the world without confines of those who do not live in tunnels (…)”
I can whistle almost the whole of the Fifth Symphony, all four movements, and with it I have solaced many a whining hour to sleep. It answers all my questions, the noble, mighty thing, it is “green pastures and still waters” to my soul. Indeed, without music I should wish to die.
Edna St. Vincent Millay letter to Allan Ross MacDougall
To imagine existence without music might be biologically possible but it would be emotionally smaller. Music operates on a frequency that bypasses the intellect and speaks directly to something primal within us. Unlike spoken language, which divides us into linguistic communities, music creates a universal grammar of emotion. A minor key can evoke melancholy in a child who has never learned the word “sadness.” A triumphant major chord can lift spirits across cultures, generations, and personal circumstances. This universality suggests that music doesn’t merely accompany human experience—it is woven into the fabric of consciousness itself.
Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation. One does not have to know anything about Dido and Aeneas to be moved by her lament for him; anyone who has ever lost someone knows what Dido is expressing. And there is, finally, a deep and mysterious paradox here, for while such music makes one experience pain and grief more intensely, it brings solace and consolation at the same time. (Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain )
When we consider a world stripped of this universal language, we imagine not just silence, but a profound disconnection from our own emotional landscape.
First dances, lullabies, funeral hymns, graduation marches—these melodies become the soundtrack to our most significant moments. They don’t merely accompany these experiences; they preserve them in a form more vivid than photographs, more immediate than written words. A few notes can transport us instantly across decades, reconstructing not just the memory but the emotion of a moment with startling clarity.
Without music, our memories would lose this dimensional quality, the emotional peaks and valleys of our lives would lack their soundtrack, making the landscape of personal history less navigable, less meaningful.
Even beyond its role in significant moments, music provides the rhythm that makes daily existence bearable, even beautiful. Work songs have existed in every culture because they transform labor from mere drudgery into something approaching art. The person who whistles Beethoven during difficult hours understands that music doesn’t change circumstances—it changes our relationship to circumstances. It provides the cadence that makes the unbearable bearable, the monotonous meaningful.
Consider the silence that would replace this constant, subtle soundtrack.
That life without music would not be worth living might initially seem hyperbolic. However, it points to a deeper truth about being human, we don’t merely survive on bread alone—we require beauty, meaning, connection, and transcendence. Music provides all of these simultaneously. It is the art form that most directly addresses our need for both individual expression and communal belonging, for both intellectual stimulation and emotional release.
Life may be technically possible without music, but it would be missing a profound transformation: the ability to turn time into beauty. Music does not change the fact that hours pass, that we suffer, or that we long for what is lost. But it alters how we inhabit those hours, how we carry that suffering, and how we hold on to memory. In this way, music does not merely decorate time — it redeems it. And in that redemption lies its deepest necessity.
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC
Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
P.S. I read this today:
As a graduate student, I cared for my grandmother, who was a big fan of Ozzy’s band Black Sabbath herself. Any time we went anywhere, we put on our playlist and sang along. When, during the Covid-19 pandemic, I cut off part of my fingertip and lost access to my campus library, I had Ozzy in my ear for much-needed heavy metal pep talks as I took my PhD qualifying exams.
And when I lost both my grandmother and my California home the following year, I still had Ozzy. His music was the score as I finished my dissertation from my parents’ basement and landed my dream job at Iowa Wesleyan University. Through the submission of my dissertation and driving nearly 1,200 miles across the country to start my new job, I listened to the Blizzard of Ozz album.
Picture this: It’s 1990, and the Scorpions are belting out “Winds of Change” to massive crowds across a transforming Europe. Just a year earlier, people around the world had woken up to the impossible news that the Berlin Wall was actually falling—that the concrete symbol of Cold War division was being torn apart by ordinary people with hammers and hope.
For those who were 19 in 1990, watching this unfold, the song became more than just a power ballad. It was an anthem of hope that seemed, for a while at least, to materialize into genuine possibilities. The world felt suddenly malleable in a way it hadn’t for decades. Meanwhile, in academic circles, scholars were beginning to re-examine how fear has shaped our world, while Norman Rockwell’s 1943 painting “Freedom from Fear” continued to hang in museums and some collective memories as a reminder of what we’re all supposedly working toward.
What connects these seemingly disparate cultural moments? They all grapple with the same fundamental question: How does fear drive human transformation?
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world
Franklin D. Roosevelt Annual Message to Congress, January 6, 1941; Records of the United States Senate; SEN 77A-H1; Record Group 46; National Archives.
I have started reading Robert Peckham’s “Fear: An Alternative History of the World”which reads like a detective story where the criminal and the hero are the same person. Starting with the Black Death in the 14th century, Peckham traces fear’s dual role throughout history—sometimes as a tool of oppression, sometimes as a catalyst for progress.
His central insight is provocative: fear has served “both a coercive tool of power and as a catalyst for social change.” Think about it. The same emotion that allows dictators to control populations also drives revolutionary movements. The fear of injustice motivates protests. The fear of environmental collapse spurs climate action. The fear of authoritarianism strengthens democratic institutions.
Peckham’s “shadow history” approach reveals how our most transformative moments—from the Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement—often emerged from confronting our deepest collective anxieties rather than avoiding them.
Now flip to Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom from Fear.” Painted during World War II, it shows parents tucking their kids into bed while war headlines lurk in the background. It’s pure Americana—the suburban dream of safety, stability, and sleeping soundly despite the chaos outside.
But here’s what makes it powerful: Rockwell wasn’t just painting propaganda. He was painting aspiration. The image says, “This is what we’re fighting for—not just victory, but the right to live without constant anxiety.”
The painting represents the endpoint that Peckham’s historical analysis points toward: societies stable enough that families can exist in protective bubbles of normalcy, even when the world burns around them.
Which brings us to the Scorpions’ “Winds of Change.” Released in 1990, the song became an unofficial anthem for the end of the Cold War—but more than that, it captured something profound about generational hope. For those who were teenagers and young adults watching the impossible become possible, the song wasn’t just about political change. It was about the sudden realization that the world was far more malleable than anyone had imagined.
Whatever one might think about the song’s musical merits, it became a soundtrack for hope that, for a while, seemed to materialize into real possibilities. The fear that had held Europe in a stranglehold for decades—fear of nuclear war, of permanent division, of unchangeable systems—suddenly transformed into collective action and unprecedented change.
The song works because it embodies Peckham’s thesis in three-and-a-half minutes of soaring guitar solos. The fear that had held Europe in a stranglehold for decades became the very force that motivated people to tear down walls and demand change. The “winds” weren’t just meteorological—they were the accumulated anxieties of generations finally finding release.
Like Rockwell’s painting, the song also represents an aspirational moment—the belief that we could move from a world defined by fear to one defined by possibility.
We’re living through our own “Winds of Change” moment. Collective anxieties about technology, climate change, political polarization, and social inequality are reaching tipping points around the world. The question isn’t whether these fears are justified—Peckham’s analysis suggests that’s the wrong question entirely.
The real question is: Will we let fear paralyze us, or will we harness it as a force for positive transformation?
Peckham’s historical analysis gives us the intellectual framework to understand fear’s complexity. We need to recognize when fear is being weaponized against us and when it’s signaling genuine problems that require action.
Rockwell’s vision reminds us what we’re aiming for: societies where people can sleep peacefully, secure in their freedom from existential anxiety.
And the Scorpions? Well, they remind us that transformation is possible—that the walls we think are permanent can come tumbling down when enough people decide they’ve had enough of living in fear. For those who lived through 1989-1990, watching seemingly impossible changes unfold in real time, the song captured not just a political moment but a feeling of generational possibility that the world could actually be different.
That sense of hope materializing into reality—however briefly—offers a template for how accumulated fears can reach tipping points and transform into collective action.
Stories from A Closet of Errors 