Children know the deepest truths about life, the elemental knowledge we unlearn in the act of living, those inarticulable truths music alone helps us remember. To hear children sing the secret wisdom of the heart is to be in the presence of something truer and more transcendent than any of our poems and postulates can touch — the ultimate affirmation of our aliveness, emanating Richard Powers’s beautiful and bittersweet assertion that “the use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.”To celebrate twenty years of The Marginalian, composer extraordinaire Paola Prestini set six of her favorite bird divinations to music, which the Young People’s Chorus of New York City brought to life with their commanding innocence and their tender power. Paola’s perfect title for the piece, drawn from one of the cards, captures what every child is when this world is worth of its children: “Meteor of Joy.” Couple with another choir of young people accompanying David Byrne’s anthem of faith in life, “One Fine Day,” then revisit the story and process behind these bird divinations. donating = lovingFor seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.newsletterThe Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s most inspiring reading. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.