Physics, music, a granddaughter, and lots of young people who aren't lazy.

Few things can hack our brains like music. It can open them like a can of tuna and spill the contents.

If you think about it with a cool scientific mind, it's an absurd mechanism. A piece of dead wood and cold metal vibrates when brushed (or struck, or plucked) by a piece of horsehair. These vibrations displace the air, which gently slaps the tiny bones inside our ears. The brain decodes all this and... bam.
Suddenly you cry. Or you laugh. Or you feel invincible.
You're receiving an emotional zip file compressed ages ago by some guy in a wig on the other side of the world, and your operating system is unpacking it in real time, hitting you right in the gut.

A mechanism of immense complexity, yet capable of canceling space and time in an instant.

What a damn wonder.
Yesterday this miracle of physics happened again. I was in Murelle, in the Upper Padua area, in the Church of Santa Maria Assunta. A baroque gem steeped in history, with its stucco work and marble floor that has seen generations pass by.

But I wasn't there for the architecture. I was there for my niece Emma and the Christmas Concert. Marchesi Music High School.
There were no “kids” in front of me. There were more than 90 budding professionals, aged 14 to 19. Ninety souls armed with strings, wind instruments, percussion, harps, and piano.
When they attacked, the church was no longer a church. It was an ocean.
A choir that could be a light breeze one moment, then become a storm and ruffle your soul the next.

I looked at Emma. I looked at her teammates. The concentration, the sweat, the knowing glances. There, between one joke and another, they were building worlds.
And here I feel cynicism, but towards the right target.
How many times do we hear that young people today don't want to do anything? That they're lazy, spineless, lost behind screens?
Bullshit. All bullshit.

My experience—last night's, but also the one with the small choir I direct—tells me another truth. An uncomfortable truth. for mediocre adults: kids aren't turned off. It's often us who don't know how to turn them on.
If these "young people lying down" are lucky enough to meet adults capable of transmitting TRUE PASSION, to treat them with respect and challenge them with beauty, they don't just rise. They rock the world.
The Marchesi boys weren't "doing their homework" yesterday. They were breaking convention.

A huge thank you goes to those professors who don't clock in, but live their subject. Those who, like yesterday, lead not with a baton, but with their hearts in their hands.
Music is physical, yes. But what I saw yesterday was pure human alchemy. And as long as it's there, the future is in good hands.