To pick a favorite

This is actually a very difficult task. I have never once taken a class where I thoroughly, sincerely enjoyed everything we read (perhaps “enjoy” is too strong a term for Kingdom of this World). But I think my favorite was watching the documentary “Tocar y Luchar” about the orchestra programs in Venezuela. I am a music minor, and find it hard to articulate why I love music, but this movie did it wonderfully! As I was watching it, I had a Word document up, and would constantly pause the movie to type a cool quote. I struggled finding the best one for the blog post. But here were some of the other quotes that might illuminate why this was my favorite:

“Whoever creates music… begins to understand from within what essential harmony is… human harmony”

“Only music can communicate with human beings … that revelation is what transforms, is sublime and develops from within the spirit of man…”

“I imagine that God must like music, because something so beautiful can only be the work of God”

“Art implies a sense of perfection.. therefore of excellence, a road to excellence. ..a sense of harmony, order, rhythm, a sense of the aesthetic, the beautiful, the universal, and the language of the invisible”

“Is rhythm a musical phenomenon? No. Rhythm is a spiritual phenomenon. It is the internal pulse of the soul. Music sublimates the interior pulse of the soul and expresses it in a harmonious way. Subtly, invisibly, and transmitted, without words, to other human beings. It is the art of making will, souls, and spirits agree to generate a message, and to generate vaules that profoundly transforms the spirit of the child who makes the orchestra. … people feel a revelation. God reveals something ineffable. Something that cannot be penetrated by rationality; that is only penetrable by intuition. It is that a young person … challenged by the musical impulse and the tasks of the orchestra, begins a psychological transformation”

“We must let ourselves be invaded by that art that brings us together through music, plastic arts, literature, cinema, and begin to recognize ourselves in our essence, in our identity through art, which is the only world where we can find the true revelation of our being, the authentic being is revealed through art”

To all the artists out there: to all of you musicians, writers, filmmakers, and humanities majors; you’re doing good work for humanity. Keep it up.