The job of sobriety is to conduct the orchestra, but something else always writes the music. It’s not something as simple as inebriation , or some approximate opposite of sobriety, because we’re not simple.
The parts of us that write the music are sometimes messy and complicated . Like divorces that bring people into dark mental places that they didn’t think existed.
Other times, the part of us that music comes from simple scenes that just happen in everyday life. Like walking around the neighborhood with your family after dinner, and smelling the streets perfumed by magnolias , lantana and roses.
The beauty is that all of these parts that write the music yearn for each other and yearn for something else at once. And it’s this pushing and pulling that creates the tension that creates the music in the first place.
The conductor makes a model of it and shows it to the world at a hundred bucks a pop.