Kathryn Nicolai

I thought of a moment when I'd felt something similar, a different kind of concert a few years before.

It was in an old roomy theater with creaking wooden seats and an expansive ceiling full of symmetrical painted murals.

framed in moldings that were already a hundred years old.

A friend had pulled a few strings for me, knowing that this particular concert was a moment I'd dreamed of.

She'd gotten me a seat, dead center, in the very front row.

And when the man had walked on stage and sat down with his cello, I could have nearly reached out and touched him.

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 a generation can.

But that didn't diminish the joy of this simple concert in the park.