An Exercise in Listening

            I have a list: a list of things I want to write about. Sometimes they come to me in the shower, walking to class, or watching The Office. Sometimes they come to me when I’m sitting in class wondering if time actually slows down every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9:15 until 10:20 (Emily understands).

I intended my next post to be on one of those topics, but instead, I’m sitting in a classroom, listening to good music, and thinking about how excited I am to go to the symphony tomorrow night.

            I recently had a conversation with a friend who wrote a paper on why symphonies should stay formal, and I was shocked there were people who thought differently. Just imaging people in jeans and an ACDC t-shirt listening to Tchaikovsky’s Fourth makes me cringe. Part of why I love the symphony is because I get to dress up, sit in a beautiful hall, and pretend the music being played in front of me is the only thing happening in the world for a few hours. It’s one of the places I can go by myself and just exist, drinking in every single moment.

There is no other place on earth like a symphony hall— the red seats contrasted with the gold and white walls and ceilings, paneled with cloth structures to bind the sound inside them. No room in the world can hold the same sanctity and universality. Beautiful churches hold a dark past; elaborate castles and manors contain hidden secrets of betrayal; forests are polluted with invisible poison. Every room, every corner of the earth has something to hide or something that taints it—except for a symphony hall.

The hall is filled with the warm sounds of the orchestra warming up; the beautiful yet dark story of Odette, Prince Siegfried, and the Odile battling light and dark; the joyous birth of James Barnes’s son. Symphony halls invite people to experience life in a way only music can do. It’s the one thing you don’t have to know how to do, because it’s a product of humanity. You don’t have to know how to read music, play an instrument, or talk about motifs or crescendos. All you have to do is listen and let the melodies and harmonies work within you.

Music doesn’t discriminate; it doesn’t belong to one group; it doesn’t hurt. Music is the purest branch of our humanity. Like anything else, it can be misused and disfigured, but its existence is good. It is mutable and fickle. It changes notes and rhythms faster than we take a breath. One single breath of a musician can create dozens of notes played over dozens of bars. Music is powerful not only in what it can do but what it is. It is complicated because it mirrors human nature—what we want, what we feel, what we know, what we say. It is complicated but easy to hear. It’s dualistic in nature and addicting in consumption. Music is all of these contradictory things and one room is able to contain and handle it.

Tell me that isn’t amazing. I won’t believe you even if you do.

The symphony is a place I can go to breathe, close my eyes, and feel the music soak into my soul and every part of me. It’s a place I travel to when I want to treat myself to something extravagant and exquisite and be uncontrollably happy and at peace. It’s somewhere I don’t take just anyone. It’s a part of me that is untouched and vulnerable. So until I feel otherwise, I will continue to spend time on my hair and makeup, choose the perfect dress, and a pair of insensible shoes. I will walk through the doors and breathe a sigh of relief when I sit down—because I’m home.