Beauty

Go to singingfish.com and search for "Butterfly Lovers." Choose the second result (ButterflyLovers;Track03). It should open in RealPlayer.

It's a violin concerto that mixes Chinese melodic themes with Western orchestration and style. It's so gorgeous, I can't stop listening to it. It took a few listens to appreciate the melody, but it has made a very stressed someone feel content and hopeful. It is amazing that music can lift a person's spirits like that. The phrase "swept up" may be a cliche, but people use it because it expresses how people taken out of themselves and their own problems and feel, for the duration of the music at least, thoroughly a part of those unspoken emotions of hope, love and anguish that are so achingly beautiful. Small wonder that armies use marching bands to stop the soldiers thinking about pain and tiredness and feel empowered by the "glory" music instead.

I suppose that's part of the genius of Hollywood, too. How many scenes without a sentimental soundtrack can we cry at? We know we're being manipulated, but music gets right in there to bring out our emotional reactions. A blockbuster without its soundtrack would be pretty flat, I imagine.

"Butterfly Lovers" isn't manipulative. But the movement I'm listening to doesn't include anger or fear or shame, only love and possibly regret... those noble Hollywood feelings that easily disappear after a few days of real life. Maybe that's why we listen to this kind of music so often. They're human emotions that we can be proud to share. If you want to think the best of yourself and others then this music certainly helps. Stravinsky's "Infernal Dance" and U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" are quite different.