Good Book

I recommend that everybody read the recent book by Oliver Sachs, "Musicophilia." I've always been awed by the universal power of music to move us (what makes it happen? what good is it? how can something so abstract be so overpowering? why is it only humans experience music in this way?) Sachs addresses all of these things but doesn't answer them completely (who can?). However, he does provide some very intriguing insights into the way our brain processes music and what happens to our musical perspectives when things go wrong. The good news is that our attraction to music is almost indestructable, surviving in measure injuries, dementia, Alzheimer's, autism, etc. Although Sachs is pretty much an atheist, I finished the book feeling that music is a unique and quite literal gift.
Here's a quote from the book:
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. [Henry Purcell’s opera, from 1689] Everyone 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.