Acoustics

Music has infused my life since I was very small.  (Isn’t that a great word, infused?)  I was the daughter of two singers, a somewhat mediocre piano student and a devotee of the marching band.  I was in various choirs all through my church-going years, and the least embarrassing of our home videos are those with a small self wandering around singing some song.  Now I am a connoisseur and a composer, always looking for more beautiful and heart-catching melodies.  It isn’t surprising, I suppose, that I relate so much of what I see and hear back to music, including my location in the world.

I’ve been thinking about acoustics this morning.  I love spaces that are meant for music.  Huge cathedrals with soaring ceilings and stone walls; wooden chapels with rafters that collect sound; teaching spaces with wide hallways and thick doors.  When I enter one of these places, I imagine that over time music collects in the air, the light, because there’s just something different about existing when one is in such a place.

I also really like these halls when they’re empty and silent.  On campus the music hall is widely acknowledged to be the creepiest place to be after dark, but I love to be there early in the morning when no sane college student would ever be awake.  I love to walk into a church sanctuary on a weekday, when it’s dim and shadowed.  It’s like a new morning, a world of possibilities.  The space is just waiting to fulfill its purpose, waiting for me to fill it.