Richard Powers on the health of being moved

I was deeply moved by this paragraph in "The Parting Glass," Powers's contribution to Music and Mind, a 2024 collection of essays about music and health compiled and edited by Renée Fleming:

Countless clinical studies have now tied the secret of health to moving. There is also great health in being moved, something that produces similar physiology. Think about the old meanings buried in the eymology of "emotion." To move and feel are complements, and the emotion that a tune triggers is a tune-up in how to move more deeply through the wider world. Music makes us go somewhere. It propels us into new states, new vantages, new emotional affordances. If you ask a scientist why music is healthy, the answer will come in units of cortisol and heart rate and blood-oxygen levels. But if you ask this listener, I'd say that music is an off-line cognitive therapy. By making us sad in the absence of real tragedy, it leaves us more adept in sadness when life calls for the real thing.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.