I imagine a physicist would invoke entropy to describe the diffusion of pressure waves and vibration into other forms of energy. Neuroscience might explain the propagation of signals from the cochlea into the brain. A psychologist could hypothesise on the influence of music on our mood and ideas. A philosopher might talk about the influence of music on the way we build our society and how that feeds back into our music. In this way, the music never stops, it continues on as echos rippling through through the universe.

You absorb it into your soul and it changes you irreversibly forever.

All these physics answers! The funnest explanation for a kid is just that music is only there when you’re listening to it. If you don’t listen, there’s no music. When you start listening again, music comes back. Then ask if they can hear the music of the wind.

It keeps traveling. If you splash some water, where does the wave go? Same question - it terms into something you can no longer see or hear… It never goes away. It becomes part of the world, forever

Music is what you hear - but it was only ever sound waves

The Langoliers eat it

It goes into your memory. That’s why you can remember a song that you heard before.

It stays in our brain and we subconsciously put it into new music years later, thereby keeping the industry’s corporate lawyers in cocaine for future decades to come.

we hang it on a wall of silence in the room of our imagination

The Langoliers eat it.

After you listen to a song, the secret police from the RIAA come and lock it up in a small, dank cell given minimal sustenance, until the next time they can send it to some seedy hotel, suburban home, or automobile, to turn a trick and make them some more money, like some sort of whoo-re for the ears.

“Everywhere, all at once. That’s why if you put your ear close to speakers it might collect too much and that can hurt your ear”

“Where do you think it goes?”

into our minds and into our hearts

They should show their kid this.

Nothing’s really ever gone