Nostalgic Before Leaving

The Entrance to 133 Beacon St

Let me paint a picture for you.  The four flights of stairs leading up to my dorm room are so old that they have been broken in by the countless inhabitants of 133 Beacon St.  The stairs are slope gently inward giving the whole staircase the slight feeling that it is peeling away from the wall and listing inwards.  White faux Corinthian columns provide support at the corners each landing and dark wooden banisters contrast with the pale walls.  There is an old fashioned mirror on the ceiling above the fifth floor of the type that normally graces expensive hotel lobby’s, but ours looks like it has black mould growing on it. 

As I climb the flight to my room, I get a musical snapshot of each floor and its inhabitants.  Funky electric guitar pours out of the door on the first floor as well as gales of girly laughter (only of note because it’s a guys room).  A woman sings on the second, there is flute wafting out

Where I Can Spy on my Peers

from the room across the landing.  The next floor up the door is always open, letting me steal a glance at room that looks like it has a resident tornado.  Then there’s my floor.  Above me, there is a Brazilian bass player who I can hear playing groovy lines late into the night as I lay on my bed. 

 

Music just floats around here.  Everywhere I go I am either hearing or imagining music.  If I go out into the real world, I analyze chord

progressions in restaurants or figure out the melody in solfege while walking to the T.  Today I decided that the elevator chime was an F#, based on its relationship to the song that was playing in my head. 

Today I was talking to someone about my probable university degree (biology and English, if you don’t know).  I was saying that it is hard for me to juggle my three loves, music, science, and English.  My friend sympathized, but only to a point.  He’s one of those enviable people who has always known that he wanted to play music. He had taken AP Chemistry and Physics in high school and really enjoyed it, but now he said he was “happy it was over so that he could focus on music”.  When I expressed my envy, he asked why I couldn’t just pick one thing and do only that.  I said I would probably go crazy.  Then I thought, would I?  I haven’t these past four weeks...