Music, of course, is still close to us in its essence:  it rushes toward us and we block its path so it passes straight through us.  Music is almost like the air of higher regions:  we breathe it deeply into the lungs of our spirit, and it infuses a more expansive blood into our hidden circulation.  Yet how far music reaches beyond us!  Yet how far it pushes on with no regard for us!  Yet how much of which it carries right through us we still fail to seize!  Alas, we fail to seize it, alas, we lose it.


--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)