Venturing Outside the Music

Anahita. Flight of the Night. By William Morris Hunt

This last week has flown by.  It seems like I blinked and the week happened without my knowledge or permission.  I have been so busy with Berklee stuff I have had hardly time to sleep.  All my classes started getting difficult this week, its like they’re trying to project our learning curve onto an exponential growth model.  It has gotten so intense.  I am eating, sleeping, and dreaming music. 

The Jukebox

On Wednesday evening I took a rare break from practicing and a group of us went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  The museum was pretty nice, but I wandered around in a daze trying to ground myself in an evening without music.  I was happiest in the music exhibit looking at period instruments (a violin with frets was the my favourite).  But other than that, I almost felt like I was in a new country where everyone spoke a different language.  A language where people did not care about scales, or how to play polyrhythms.  I was singing solfege under my breath and thinking about chords while other tourists and locals walked past oblivious.  I couldn’t stay in the moment, I wanted to get back home so I could play some more violin. 

One exhibit snapped me out of my musical reverie.  The “hippie chic” exhibit displayed a jukebox in one corner of the gallery.  I raced over to it and read the song selection avidly and listened to some of the tunes.  I promptly started singing along, switching between the base line, chords and melody.  Oddly, I didn’t catch anyone staring.

VW Vans, a Part of the Hippie Chic Exhibit

Earlier this week I was walking past the café’s lining the street outside Berklee and I heard someone say, “Is there a music school around here, or something”?  I presume he was saying this in reference to all people walking past carrying instruments.  But my initial reaction was one of intense sadness.  I felt so sorry for him that he didn’t know Berklee was there.  Not the physical actuality of the buildings, but the intense musical world they represent.  A world in which I am totally immersed.  And a world that I love.