Immediate Context:

“Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education” was written by Yo-Yo Ma in 2014. Yo-Yo is a famous Cellist and songwriter and he has won over seventeen Grammy and has produced over ninety albums.

Imposed context:

The purpose for reading this text is to gain a better understanding of art and how the human brain recognizes it.  “Ma considers the role of the arts in the world, arguing that the elements of empathy provided by artistic endeavors are essential to the kind of balanced thinking needed today”

Internal Context:

The “so what” is that humans need to find meaning and living “all of what we do as humans in society occurs in that brain space between life and death”.  Ma also talks about finding equilibrium “Equilibrium occurs when the information from the edges is available at the core”.

Unfamiliar References:

Cognitive Reasoning- concerned with the act or process of knowing

Bandwidth- the range of frequencies within a given band

Lascivious- feeling or revealing an overt and often offensive sexual desire