Casebook 4: A Score Settled - 4.1[index]
Life is a rhythm tapped out in human heartbeats. When I have spent too long in the company of evil men, when my life has settled into a bleak and oppressive cadence, when my soul is at its quietest and most besieged, I turn to music:
I sit in my study. I must be alone and undisturbed. I close my eyes and listen. Until everything within myself that is deep beyond my understanding dissolves. Minutes or hours pass – I am never sure. And then I return to the world as if waking from a dream in which I didn't exist.
Music cannot be evil. That is to say, it has no potential to be used for evil purposes. Literature, film – art even – can be bent to the will of evil: to propagate evil thoughts; to rewrite history in the oppressor's favour, to torment the individual in the face of the world. But never music. Music is pure. Of course, it can menace, terrify and appal, but never destroy. As I am fond of remarking to my wife whilst showing off a rare 12": I have never possessed a criminal record.
That was my opinion. Certain incidents have changed it. All things are instruments of evil in the hands of man: