Again in San Francisco two days after the efficiency, Harrington is nonetheless buzzing. An meeting of consultants on essentially the most dire state of affairs going through our society has ended on a excessive, resonant observe — not a blissful observe, per se, however a hopeful one. “It is a actual level of carry and buoyancy within the face of nice hazard,” he tells me with a contagious smile. “I now see the work we’re doing when it comes to Earlier than July 16 and After July 16.

“I felt just like the music did its job, and I felt like we did our job as musicians,” he elaborates. “As musicians, we practice ourselves and we’re educated by our lecturers to pay attention and pay attention rigorously, and the meeting allowed us to do that.”

This is to not say that a live performance, and even an meeting of a few of the world’s smartest folks, can alone save the world, and even alter it considerably. However a union of the 2 can put the stakes in a new context. “The mixture of science and music is particularly potent,” Daniel Holz — who chairs the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Safety Board and was the July 16 efficiency’s organizer and MC — writes to me days later. “The consideration of nuclear conflict is basically inhumane, and it is vital to be reminded of our shared humanity. In the course of the Meeting, the Nobel laureates and nuclear consultants have been wrestling with info and numbers and technical points. One can attempt to use phrases and reasoning and equations to seize the spark that makes humanity value preserving, however artwork has the facility to viscerally convey the deep data of what makes us human.”