Read transcript: Why I Believe in Music I'm going to talk about what changed my life and what made music and community what they are to me. My mother was sick and needed a heart transplant. It's a pretty extreme thing, right? And when the organ becomes available, it's instantaneous. There's a limited amount of time to make what needs to happen happen. I was in Texas visiting family when the heart became available. People came and picked me up from Oklahoma, and I made it back to University Hospital in Oklahoma City at 2 o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday. The doctors weren't trying to sugarcoat anything. They talked about the chances, and they were already talking about where I was going to live if things didn't work out. I got in the elevator. I went up to the ninth floor. The ninth-floor door was open. I was very tired. I was very scared. I was pretty numb. And I walked in and heard a cappella music. I thought, Well, this is full circle. I have totally gone insane. As we walked the halls and the corridors, the sound got louder, and we made it to the waiting room. The waiting room was standing room only. There were actually people out in the hallways, and they were singing four-part harmony. They stopped. They formed a line. I got 50 hugs. I made it to the end of that line of hugs, and my sister was there. She's like, "Matt, Mom has just woken up. And the first thing she asked for was you." So I went into that hospital room. There were all of these machines. You couldn't even see my mom. There was so much beeping. There were so many tubes. I remember walking in. I remember being able to hold my mother's hand and her squeezing mine. I've looked back on that moment in my life more than any other thing that has ever happened to me. Because what I think about is how I felt before and how I felt after. Before was the worst day of my life. Before was absolute fear and terror and torture, and thinking that my life was over. And it felt unbelievably lonely. And then I remember afterward—in just five minutes—feeling peace, feeling love, being comforted. So when I think about music and I think about community, I think about that. And when I think about what music should be and what it should do, that's what I think it should do.