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Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the
sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world. The note, the scale, the chord;
melodies, harmonies, arrangements, symphonies, ragas, Chinese operas, jazz, the blues: that
such things should exist, that we should have discovered the magical intervals and distances
that yield the poor cluster of notes, all within the span of a human hand, from which we can
build our cathedrals of sound, is as alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love.
Maybe the birds taught us. Maybe not. Maybe we are just creatures in search of exaltation.
We don't have much of it. Our lives are not what we deserve;
they are, let us agree, in many
painful ways deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows us a world that is
worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the
world.
--Salman Rushdie
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