I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I invited a coworker to join me at a concert, a Carl Orrith's dramatic classical work,

based on 24 medieval poems called Carmina Burana.

Music and poetry? He says, I don't know.

He begrudgingly came along, but not before declaring he has never heard the

composition, nor does he particularly care for choral music.

On the first point, I assured him he has heard the opening movement in at least a

dozen films, and on the second point, he just hadn't come across a

performance worthy of his admiration. That or he is an incorrigible Philistine.

We laughed.

At the show's end, after multiple ovations,

we fouled out of the theater.

We were both exhausted from a powerful performance of voices

and orchestral instruments.

My coworker asked, how could I have survived so long without that music?

I looked in his face and said, we don't.

His question echoed the substance of my wife's sentiments when experiencing works of sublime virtuosity. Alvanale's moving choreography and revelations, Kamasi Washington's gorgeous

jazz album, The Epic, Romir Beertin's groundbreaking collages of the block, and just about everything Ava Duverne has written and or directed to date.

Each time, D.D. says, as long as this exists, humanity will be okay.

I am drawn to the idea of art as a barometer of our collective well-being, as essential to our survival.

To imagine our lives without film, literature, music, visual arts, theater, and performance, is the court of post-apocalyptic

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