
“Our existence is musical in nature.
Music as an art form is essentially playful.
You play the piano, you do not “work” the piano.
Why?
Well, music differs from say, travel.
When you travel you are trying to get somewhere.
And we are all too often busy getting everywhere faster & faster & faster.
In music though, one doesn’t make the end of the composition, the point of the composition.
If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played the fastest.
And there would be composers who only wrote finales.
It is the same when dancing, you don’t aim for one particular spot in the room.
And when you get there, you say, “I’ve arrived”.
The point of dancing is the dance.
And we must remember to dance while the music is playing.”
An extract from a talk given by the philosopher Alan Watts