In ancient times, poetry was used to record historical information (such as the events described in The Iliad and The Odyssey). As journalism grew into its own craft, poetry was freed from its duty of registering objective facts. Now it may speak less about external conditions, and more about the author's emotion reaction to those conditions.

There are parallels to this evolution in other arts; for example, the visual arts have been used to preserve images in paintings and sculpture. Photography gave us a better tool for this task, so the arts of painting and sculpture no longer had to be true to physical appearances; instead, they could be an expression of the artist's inner world, reflecting that world through color and pure shapes.

Music, too, can be seen from these perspectives. Is it an echo of the sounds in the physical environment, or does it arise from the composer's inner environment? One composer writes down the subtle melodies he hears in the wind, while another composer might write the same musical notation -- from an "inner wind" of feeling. The two composers are equally honest to the spirit of music. Imagine that the wind is a singer, consciously expressing the inner sounds that it hears -- and that expression is the sound that we discern physically.

Even if poetry and art and music are reflections of the physical world, they are yet a reflection of our inner life, too, however indirectly.