Poem by Maria Popova. Reading by Nick Cave. Animation and direction by Daniel Bruson. Music by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

A note from the filmmaker: “How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? The finitude and yet vastness of both our deeds and the cosmos through a fleeting moment of contemplation.”

But We Had Music was made as part of Universe in Verse, an annual charitable gathering that celebrates the wonder of reality through science and poetry.