I Tunes

From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

When art—any kind, really—is at its best, it feels like it's speaking directly to its audience. I was walking home from band practice late last night, following the 86th street transverse across Central Park and listening to Wildflowers, Tom Petty's 1994 record. I'm not the world's biggest Tom Petty fan, but I dig the guy and I've always dug that record a lot. Last night, however, it cut right to the bone. It was dark, though New York's never really dark, the taxis and buses were flying past my left and whipping sand and bits of leaves up into my eyes. My guitar hung on my back and acorns and worms covered the sidewalk.

Wildflowers was playing through my headphones and, I swear, talking specifically to me. Line after line seemed a response to something I'd been thinking or feeling. Music does that to me more than any other art form. Poetry does it, but rarely does fiction have that effect. Paintings—pretty much never, though there are many that blow my mind. I've never, ever, ever felt personally addressed by a building, though I suppose architecture's a different kind of art, what with its focus on holding up heavy things like I-beams. Music gets through to me though. Worth knowing.