Kathryn Nicolai

I'd expected to be enthralled by his playing, to be enraptured by the acoustics produced in the old theater.

What I hadn't counted on were the tears that slipped down my cheeks.

The feeling of my breath being taken from my body.

The way I almost couldn't keep track of the notes as they thrummed through my chest.

I gulped and pressed my hand over my heart.

and sat still so as to not break the spell while he played.

I'd never had an experience quite like that before.

This man hadn't just been speaking a language I didn't know.

He seemed himself to have come from a different planet and was showing us what language was like on the other side of the cosmos.

Not everyone could make music like that.

In fact, only a few in every generation can.

But that didn't diminish the joy of this simple concert in the park or the power of a string of notes to cut through thought and make us present.

There was a clarinet player somewhere in my neighborhood, whom I heard sometimes when I was out for a walk.

The music coming from an open window in an upstairs room.

The playing was sometimes squeaky and halting, but it was also patient and persistent, and I was always glad to hear it.

It made me think back to my own days in school band.

I joked sometimes.

that I had played eighth-chair flute, even though there were only five of us.

The truth was that because it hadn't come quickly to me, I'd given it up.

In my immature brain,