Yesterday, around midday, I went out to the corner grocery store to get a few items. The previous four hours were all spent indoors, dealing with the last breaths and the passing of our beloved elder cat Calvin. I did the shopping I needed and didn’t really emerge into the ‘real world’ until I stepped out of the store into the parking lot. The day was radiant – a brilliant blue sky, light breeze, temperature in the mid 70’s. I hadn’t noticed anything up until that point. I was lost in my grief. But in that moment, I experienced both profound loss and sheer joy simultaneously. That feeling is what the fine arts are able to do for us as humans. We don’t need to experience the passing of a dear pet or friend or family member to experience the most profound forms of grief as expressed by, say, the end of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, or the radiant joy of a gorgeous late summer sunrise expressed, for example, by the opening of Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, or Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. And we also can experience that paradoxical feeling of both at the same time, like Wagner so beautifully does in his Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde, or by Strauss in his final, sublime vocal trio at the close of Der Rosenkavalier. This depth of feeling – regardless of whether the feelings are positive, negative, or somewhere in between – is what defines great art. It is what separates great art from that which is merely entertainment. And that is why it is so vital that we have support for our great institutions, large and small, in the arts, no matter where we live.