[ WP ] The day the music died .

You never know what you have until it's gone. 
 
 I do n't think any of us really understand a statement like that - not until it's happened to us personally. Loss is something you have to experience to understand. You can conceive of it intellectually, of course; the concept is easy enough to understand. 
 
 There are certain things the brain just adjusts to over time. Whether it's the movement of a boat, the odor of your own body, or the buzzing of construction in the background, you're capable of incorporating it into your mental *list of things to expect*; over time, you forget it even exists, and it becomes Just Another Thing you wo n't remember unless someone explicitly reminds you about it. 
 
 The Music, as some have taken to calling it, is one of those things - except it's something that has existed for at least as long as humanity has been alive, as near as we can tell. It's been incorporated so thoroughly into the annals of human history and in the process of our evolution that we are physically *incapable* of consciously registering it. 
 
 Now is n't that interesting? Something so important to our very existence is something we ca n't notice without machines. 
 
 See, the Music is more than just a few jumbled notes we ca n't hear. It is joy and laughter and love, all the beauty of mankind compressed into nothing more than a series of compressions and rarefactions carried by matter. 
 
 I'm not saying that beauty does n't exist without it, of course. But without it, we can not recognize beauty. It exists all around us, and yet for all we try, all we see is an endless, painful gray. 
 
 The day the Music died, our hearts died with it. Perhaps one day, it will return, and we will again see the life and joy in the world around us... 
 
 But until then? 
 
 I'm... not sure I can bring myself to care.
