Carried away

.... I spend much of my time making my mind up about things, trying to account for and authenticate my feelings about music and suchlike. It can be an uneasy process. Western civilization prides itself on a conception of art that implies its ability to change us, for the better but also for the basic good of being changed. It keeps us open, so to speak, and too much certainty - being too sure of oneself - inhibits this process like nothing else. At the same time you need to grasp your response and let it take hold of you, to let it filter into the rest of your perceptions so that they cohere in the heat of the experience. Music is particularly powerful in this respect, easily gaining a sense of unchallengeable necessity, once you've ceded to it its right to do so. We tend to use the phrase "getting carried away" in explaining moral weakness, but if we never get carried away we probably never learn what morality is in the first place....

- Guy Dammann, Freelance, TLS Commentary (December 16, 2011)