“Music? Few of you have any idea what it is. That thing you have is … well, it isn’t really music. It’s more like the funerary remains.

Music was something we used to -do together-. There was no such thing as ‘listening to music’. We -became it- and it -shook the roots of the universe-. This thing you do isn’t music. It’s the amplified remains of specific aggressive structural trends in tone relation.

If you want to get some sense of what I mean, you have to understand that the earth and the sky, the creatures and time… the stars… they -sang songs in us- and -we met and became them-. Music is the language -before language-, and before you started learning it, you began to develop its musical precursors. The developed state of these precursors makes what you call language look cruelly primitive — if used without its natural basis, something we might call ‘meaningsong’.

Your people have no such thing, but you still carry the living fact of it hidden inside you, and it can be recovered. Some of your hermits know something of the old way. Some people who are hiding have discovered the other music. They are no longer welcome in your cultures, and will not be found cutting records and strutting around in sequins in order to fill vast amphitheaters.

Our music could pull human bodies up into the air. Or shatter walls. Our music was a way, not a thing. It destroyed disease — instead of implementing it as a policy. This thing you have, it stands in the way of the living music within your hearts. It is like your governments. It pretends to heroism and virtue. It delivers bondage and atrocity.”

— an anonymous informant