Thursday's "A Space for Out-of-the-Box Joy"

For the last couple of days, I’ve been waking up and listening to at least three songs before I get out of bed. This morning, as I listened, I was trying to decide what I would write about today. I tend to have my best thoughts in the morning, so I usually wait until then to choose my topic.

The music had me thinking about when we first moved to Germany in 1978 or thereabouts. We were still looking for housing because my parents didn’t want to live on base. There were six of us at the time, so finding a larger place was important—or at least that’s how I remember it.

While we were searching, a gentleman who was returning to the United States rented his condominium to us while he looked for his next home. He would be gone for several months, and it worked out perfectly for both families.

I remember enjoying our stay in the condo in Steinbach. Steinbach is a town in the middle of Hesse, Germany, and part of the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region. There were quite a few American families there, so it felt like a little piece of America sprinkled with German culture.

I want to say we lived there for three or four months. The school year began during that time, though the details have become blurry over the years. My parents enrolled us in a nearby American school. We rode a bus to a stop near the school and then walked the rest of the way.

In that blur, I can’t tell you what the school looked like, the name of my teacher, or any of the classes I took. But one thing—the only thing—I remember clearly.

One day our teacher brought out a collection of musical instruments. We each got to choose one and experiment with it until she told us to stop. I always wanted to be a good student, so I paid close attention whenever she gave instructions.

Until I picked up the xylophone.

I became so enthralled with it that a classmate had to walk over and tap me on the arm to let me know the teacher had already said, “Stop.”

Shortly afterward—what seemed like only a day or two later—we had to move out of the condo because the owner was returning. We moved back into the barracks while my parents continued their search for a permanent home in Nieder-Eschbach.

I completely forgot about that memory for years. Then I started reading career-development books.

One common exercise asks you to remember a time when you lost track of time or became completely absorbed in an activity. It took me a while, but eventually I remembered that xylophone.

As the years have passed, other music-related memories have surfaced.

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A year before Germany, while we were living in Connecticut, I had to take music class. I wasn’t thrilled about it. I couldn’t sing, and piano wasn’t an instrument I offered to play in school, at least not this school. It was also the year my parents bought our piano.

One day the teacher played a piece of classical music, and I immediately fell in love with it. I ran home and excitedly told my parents all about it.

My mother said, “That sounds familiar.”

After searching through the piano bench, we discovered sheet music for the piece. To my delight, the music for In the Hall of the Mountain King had been sitting there all along.

I’ve often wondered: Is a xylophone similar enough to a piano that the connection makes sense? Could this interest somehow trace back to my paternal grandmother, who was an excellent pianist and could play by ear?

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I’m sure if I sat here long enough, I could come up with an entire list of musical memories. But for now, I’ll leave you with one more.

I was attending Penn State during my first year. As I understood it at the time, graduate students were required to live on campus, at least for their first semester.

One of my dorm mates was writing her thesis on the importance of music in film. She asked if she could interview me, and I agreed.

She had me listen to different pieces of music and asked questions about how they made me feel and what kinds of scenes I imagined while listening. I remember thoroughly enjoying the entire experience.

For a while afterward, I wondered whether I should be doing something along those lines myself. Every now and then, I still entertain the thought of becoming a film composer.

Wouldn’t that be fun?

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I still carry all of these memories with me today, though I’m not entirely sure what to do with them.

Are they pointing toward a career path?

Or, if not a career, what is the significance of my fascination with these musical moments? What am I not seeing?

My mentor at Intergraph, where I worked on cartography software and learned interpolation and triangulation, once told me not to take my work home with me. She encouraged me to do something completely different in my spare time.

She talked about her years singing in a chorus and playing in a band.

Years later, while working at TRW (now part of Northrop Grumman), I had a coworker who built a music studio in a room downstairs in his home. He and several other coworkers formed a band and performed at our annual company cookout.

I remember how much energy and enthusiasm he seemed to have.

Often, I would think back to my mentor’s advice and wonder if that was where some of his energy came from.

Are these musical memories a call from the Universe, suggesting that music is where I’ll find renewed energy? Or are they pointing toward an entirely new career path?

I don’t know the answer.

But I do know that music has been quietly showing up throughout my life, asking me to pay attention.

“Music, after all, washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”— Berthold Auerbach

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Written By: Me

Edited By: ChatGPT

Image By: ChatGPT (prompt & creation)