Music does not fix anything. Let us be clear about that. Music does not pay your rent. Music does not stop a war. Music does not bring anybody back from the dead.

What music does is remind you that you are not the only one who broke.

Billie Holiday sang Strange Fruit in 1939 and it did not stop a single lynching. But every person in that room knew they were not alone in their horror. That is what the song did. Not a solution. A witness.

When Johnny Cash played Folsom Prison in 1968 he did not open the gates. Nobody went home. But for two hours every man in that room was a human being who somebody came to see. That is the remedy. Not freedom. Recognition.

After September 11th the New York Philharmonic played Brahms Requiem. Nobody in that audience thought the music would undo what happened. They came because sitting alone with it was worse than sitting together with it. The remedy is not the absence of the wound. The remedy is the presence of company.

In 1964 Nina Simone played Mississippi Goddam after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. She did not call it a protest song. She called it a show tune. The deadliest thing she ever did was smile while she said it. The remedy sometimes looks like fury with good timing.

When New Orleans floods, the musicians play. Not because the water goes down faster with a trumpet. Because the water goes down eventually and when it does you want to still be the kind of city that has a second line. The remedy is the decision to continue.

Victor Jara sang in the Chile Stadium with broken hands. The soldiers broke his fingers so he could not play guitar. He sang anyway. The remedy does not require the instrument to be intact. The remedy requires the voice.

Music does not fix anything. Music is not a tool. Music is what humans do when the tools stop working. When the phone calls do not help. When the therapist cannot get to the thing. When the news is too much and the silence is worse. Somebody plays something and you sit in it and for three minutes you are not solving anything. You are just being in it with somebody else who has been in it too.

That is the oldest medicine on the planet. Not a cure. A company.

See also: The Lighthouse • The Basement • The Free Thing • The Protest Song • The Visiting Room • The Warrant • The Headline • The Neighbor • Encore • Rehearsal • Potluck