writing mixed-media non-fiction
+A very ally work, without necessarily being part of ally, about my relationship with music and a bit about how music works.
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I would love to tell you that I hear music in all things.
+I would love to tell you, as a composer, that I hear in the thunder timpaniSome thunderstorm audio
, in the wind soft flutes, or in the rain a gentle snapping of fingers or rustling of paper; that there is some divine rhythm beneath all things that those gifted by God with talent or who have studied for years are able to hear.
I would love to tell you that the everyday world is filled with music.Machine audio
I would love to tell you that to hear a car start bears some greater meaning or that the slow ramp up of a flywheel moves me.
+I would also love to tell you that the patterns in my dogs’ wet furbackground image of such
or windswept snowbackground image of such on orange fencing
that has melted and refrozen is the written form of that same language of angels that shows up in the everyday sounds of the world.
There is a difference between music and a mood, though. Perhaps some composers hear the music in the everyday world, but I was never one of them. Moods, sure. Moods out the wazoo. I gain endless satisfaction on the perfect click of a switch, or a little thrill of excitement on hearing the three-phase converter’s flywheel spinning up.
+The sound of wind coming down over the Flatirons in Boulder made me feel hollowed out — and I know that doesn’t sound like an emotion, but I promise it was — like some sort of pipe in an organ, like the wind was blowing through me. It was not quite longing, not quite saudade. It was like if the unbidden thought of “is astral projection just a wish with very visual imagery?” were a mood. I would see myself, with my arms outstretched, borne away over the valley to the east of the Flatirons, looking down over the quiet and dark highway 93, past the cement factory, until I was set down amidst the wind turbine testing range, because wasn’t that where the wind wanted to go?
+Not music, but a feeling.
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