A Quote by Oliver Sacks
I think there is no culture in which music is not very important and central. That's why I think of us as a sort of musical species.
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Argentina is a very interesting culture because unlike Europe and the US, they did not abandon rock and roll music, they did not turn their backs on it. It's an important part of their culture. So guitar music is an important part of their culture. So me being into rock music, I get respect working there, which wasn't happening in Europe or in the US.
I think that what one can see from a Darwinian account is how the addition of culture in our species turns us into a very special sort of animal, an animal that can be a moral agent in a way that no other animal can be.
I've never been very good at creating absolute music, which has no non-musical dimension to it. I think that is why filmmakers gravitated toward my work.
I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.
I guess I think of a musical as something in which the music is sort of like the engine of the piece - whether it is in the theatre or in film.
When I think about the real pioneers of the psychedelic movement in a musical sense, not just the culture, everything had a handmade sort of vibe to it. We're inventing our culture as we move along into this.
I think I'm sort of blind to genre. As long as it has a sort of honesty about it, which I think you'll hear in whatever music you respond to, then I think it doesn't need to be called anything particularly.
I think the music industry, for instance, is such a huge, multibazillion-dollar industry and it's become very, very savvy. There's a very short grace period in which actual human rebellion or resistance can thrive before it's co-opted by these huge companies. And all of youth culture is packaged and sold back to us at this furious rate these days. I think it's part and parcel to this corporate encroachment on our lives in general.
I think everyone's had a brother or a father or a cousin, uncle or grandfather who's had health issues because they've neglected things. I think that's almost been part of Australian culture, which is why I think Movember is really important. We need to change that outlook.
Opera on television in Europe is very important. If you think about it in the broadest sense: a lot of the dramas made in India with music are practically operas. They're not sung but they have a very big appeal. I don't know why American television people are so stupid but at the moment, they just seem to have some sort of a block. They just do what they do and they do it for a certain number of years. Then it wears out and they try something else. It's just a matter of time I think.
I'm very much inspired by the Latin music, especially the romantic boleros. Not that when I sit to write a play I listen to boleros. But I think it's part of my DNA, it's part of my upbringing. I grew up in a house where this is the kind of music my parents used to listen to. This is the kind of music I would even hear in my neighborhood. I think that sort of romanticism is part of the culture.
I would love to see music reinstated as an essential part of schooling. The culture that it brings; the knowledge that it brings. Just learning how to read music requires metrics, and I think that helps you with mathematics. A lot of scientists and doctors have a musical background - it's very interesting.
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does-humans are a musical species.
I think being Canadian helps you as a journalist in America, because you're sort of on the outside watching this big party going on, and you're sort of taking mental notes as it goes on. I think if you're in the party the whole time, you don't notice it as much. And I think Canadians are very good observers of American culture.
There is a certain amount of righteous indignation I hold for the American culture, because to get back to the real root of it, to get broader about it, my opinion that is my species - and my culture in America specifically - have let me down and betrayed me. I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon. And I think this culture of ours has such promise, with the promise of real, true freedom, and then everyone has been shackled by ownership and possessions and acquisition and status and power.
But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity, and that being able to join in musical activity, along with dancing, could have been necessary at a very early stage of human culture.
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