That s well-put, and in more philosophical moments, I tend to think of real music as being that pure. But I m less optimistic that my human instincts are so intact. I sometimes fear that music is something I ve never quite experienced because it is so foreign to the consumer culture that is all I have ever known.

I feel I ve had glimpses of music qua music in impromptu jam sessions in a friend s barn, or working on recording music on a four-track, or at a really inspired show when the band seems to be doing it for love.

Reading old novels has given me intimations of this too, of women needing finishing so that they could supply music in the country houses that the characters in bourgeois novels tend to inhabit, of country fairs and balls being a much bigger deal to characters because of the occasions for music they presented. I would think about how much we take recorded music for granted and how it has robbed music of much of its enchantment.

That you had to buy music, making it somewhat scarce, give it some ersatz magic, but it wasn t like (so I imagined) when you had to know someone who could play or sing in order to hear it, when almost all music a person would hear in ordinary life was what we know would regard as amateur. And when you heard music, it was compelling; you d never think to regard it as aural wallpaper. (Classical music, the product of this era, still demands that level of attention.