The following ties in nicely with another thread (What is music?)
All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even t
hen, on the rare occasions that something opens within, and the music enters, w
hat we mainly hear, or hear corraborated, are personal, private, vanishing evoc
ations. But the man who creates the music is hearing somethin else, is dealing
with the roar rising from the void, and imposing order on it as it hits the ai
r. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it
has no wards, and more triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph,
when he triumphs, is ours.
-- James Baldwin Sonny's Blues