Orchestral Music from Space

There's no sound quite like it.

Dad loved classical music and contrary to the court’s declaration, he's not dead, at least not in the conventional sense. It appears improbable the two should be related, but they are, and only now, much later in life, do I understand how the former led to the latter. I’m being pulled toward the same end and before I’m gone, I need the truth to be known.

Every day after work, Dad arrived home, kissed Mom, asked us about our days and then ventured into the family room to choose a vinyl record. We owned a reel-to-reel player and an AM/FM receiver, but Dad preferred records.

“There are nuances with every record cut, microscopic indentations that sweeten the strings or give energy to the brass — beautiful sounds you’ll never hear on the radio,” he said.

He played a variety, a carefully chosen few each night that reflected his current mood. If he felt nostalgic, then we heard Waldteufel’s Les Patineurs or Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz. Mom would join him for sherry and a dance before preparing supper. They spun around and around, sometimes clipping the end table and crashing together on the couch, laughing. Over the meal Dad reminisced about vacations as a child, trips to the Grand Canyon in Grandpa’s beat up burgundy camper, memories teetering on extinction until the music gave them new life.

When Grandma died, Mozart’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and a set of somber pieces played on repeat for several days. Dad didn’t cry at the funeral. On the couch, lights off, he wept as soft notes celebrated her love and devotion. Mom joined him in the dark after the music stopped, a silent comfort to help ease the pain.

The next week Dad blasted Copland’s Hoe-Down, windows open in the dead of winter, beating back the depression with the rhythmic clap of horse hooves and trumpets blaring. Before the song finished our elderly neighbor Ms. Wisniewski walked over to complain about the noise.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Wisniewski, it’s always been a dream of mine to join the rodeo,” Dad said. “I’ll dream a little quieter next time.” He gave me a wink and I knew his period of mourning had ended.

I never fell in love with classical the way Dad did, but his routine brought a sense of normalcy I couldn’t fully appreciate until the day the music stopped. The last song he played ushered out the end of an era and the beginning of a mystery that haunted me for years.

The song piqued my curiosity, an unfamiliar tune, different from Dad’s normal selections. When I tried to enter the living room to ask about it, Mom pulled me back into the kitchen by the waist of my jeans. She shook her head, furrowed her brow and whispered that Dad lost his job. We were going out for ice cream.

In the background, a quiet flute opened, barely audible, eerily repetitive, punctuated after a few minutes by an oboe. French horns joined in the chorus, the crescendo building like the slow drip of molasses. Twelve minutes into Ravel’s Boléro, Dad stood in the middle of the living room, conducting an imaginary orchestra with all of the anger and frustration pouring out through the sweat on his brow. By the time Mom shut the door behind us, symbols crashed together, trumpets roared, and wisps of Dad’s salty gray hairs flew madly.

Thirty minutes later, after I took my last bite of a chocolate waffle cone, Dad pulled into the Dairy Maid. He ordered a double banana split, sparklers included, and invited us to dig into the extravaganza. Distracted by a second desert, nothing about his emotional shift concerned me, likely the plan all along. Mom spooned a few bites and said nothing to Dad, choosing instead to communicate non-verbally through worrisome glances. 

Over the following weeks Dad stayed out of the living room. He spent every waking hour in his basement workshop, an organized chaos of tools and electronic parts strewn about a makeshift wooden bench. He barely slept, ate dinner by shoveling food into his mouth at a laughable pace, chugged down a glass of milk and then slipped back downstairs. The thick silence in the late hours choked me and for the first time I worried about my parents.

On a Saturday afternoon he exited his workshop with a grin and walked into the living room. He carried in his hands a pair of headphones I didn’t recognize. The earpieces were larger than normal, contained several buttons and dials and looked to be reconstructed from dozens of spare parts. A long antenna stuck up from one side and strands of wire and fabric insulated the long, thick cord. I perked up and expected Brahms and Bach to announce Dad’s arrival. Instead, he plugged in the headphones, placed them on his head, chose a record and sat slouched over on the couch.

After fiddling with the dials, Dad reached a satisfactory configuration. He sat up erect, pupils dilated, unblinking eyes fixed on the wall, growing wider as the needle on the record approached the last groove. When it finished, Dad’s comatose state subsided, and he slumped back against the couch cushion. He removed the headphones, a groan escaped his lips and he slept until dinner. 

We all ate together that evening. Dad took bites carefully and chewed methodically, as if each morsel gave clues to a riddle he had yet to solve. He engaged in dreamlike conversation with the voice of a man I knew, but sounded older, gravelly, every syllable stretched to its breaking point. When I mustered up the courage to ask about the headphones, he tussled my hair and replied, “A personal project. Nothing of concern.”

In the skin around his eyes and on his forehead, I discovered new wrinkles. Reddish-tan spots formed below his receding hairline. Was it possible that I never studied him so intently, unable to recognize the signs of middle age as they crept over his face? After we finished eating, Dad took the headphones and locked them in a safe. He kept the key in his pocket.

Every day for several hours he rotated records, always listening with headphones. In less than one month, I watched as Dad aged at an inconceivable pace. New wrinkles formed by the hour, his hair fell out and he shuffled around the house, treating Mom like a bedside nurse in a retirement home.

One afternoon, I heard angry whispers behind my parent’s closed bedroom door. Mom and I packed our bags and left for a vacation at her sister’s home, a chance to spend time with cousins she said, and an obvious excuse to leave. Later Mom confided in me that she needed distance and Dad needed an opportunity to reflect.

When we returned a week later, Dad was gone, but not in the way I understood men left, belongings packed and a letter on the kitchen table. He vanished without a trace. His clothes sat in a pile on the couch in the flattened shape of my father, headphones on top, plugged in, record stopped. Mom dug the key out from his pants, unplugged the headphones and locked them in the safe.

Mom cried. I did not. Instead, anger welled up inside me and I vowed never to listen to classical music again. My hatred grew for Dad, and I poured all of that angst into classic rock and an absurd rebellious streak.

Led Zeppelin, The Doors, AC/DC and Pink Floyd carried me through high school and college. Guitar riffs and crazy, wild drums echoed through every phase of my existence, accentuated by my long hair and dirty tattered jeans. On August 27, 1986, I attended a concert where Eddie Van Halen played the greatest guitar solo of all time. The contrasting chords surfaced unresolved issues and a burning desire to finally uncover the truth. I returned home, through a fit of tears demanded Mom hand over the key and I left with the headphones.

Back in my tiny apartment, I plugged the headphones into a CD player and stood in the middle of my own living room, ready for any experience that could explain Dad’s departure. Instead, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven filled my ears, followed by The Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil. I pressed the buttons and turned the dials on the side of the earpiece, distorting the pitch until the music became unrecognizable. Nothing about the situation made sense until I realized Dad only listened to records.

I dipped into rent money and purchased a record player and Black Sabbath’s Iron Man on vinyl record, a pricey find that would surely render me homeless. After I hooked up the record player, I placed the needle down and waited. The drum beat nine times and a guitar opened up with the popular sliding legato, Ozzy bringing forth the question, Has he lost his mind? I wanted to crush the headphones, tear them to pieces and incinerate them.

Dad left us for no good reason, I concluded.

On an impulse, I turned the same dial as before, expecting a similar distortion. The room dimmed — not from an extinguished bulb or a cloud concealing the sun — a veil fell over my reality. I turned the dial back and the veil lifted. I turned it all the way and a disorienting blackness overtook me as I floated in the emptiness. I reached up to feel for another dial and turned it. This launched me forward through a cascade of intense colorful waves of light, a swirl of galaxies that moved past at extraordinary speeds. My body and mind squeezed down infinitesimally small, and the universe slurped me through the tip of a straw. I rode inside tiny tubes, breaking at junctions left or right and then slammed to a stop. 

Below me, tall bipedal androgynous beings populated a vast city and transit system, talking in a foreign tongue, aware of my presence, but unphased by it. They cast an iridescent glow, possessed two arms at their sides and a third arm that emerged from the chest. All around me beings traveled past as beams of lights flashing to the furthest reaches of space.

Without warning it all reversed and flung me back through the tip of the straw, a black dot that grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared. As I grew larger, the colorful waves faded out and the darkness lifted. The record stopped. I looked up at the clock on the wall. No more than five minutes had passed. It felt like eight hours of strenuous exercise. Exhausted, my legs wobbled and I crumbled to the carpet.

I sold everything I owned — no TV, no instruments, no furniture — any belongings I could pawn bought me a travel pass to planets unknown across the universe. Every classic rock record I could buy, I did, and I worked my way through them one-by-one, aging quickly with every ride. With each trip I sacrificed a small piece of my earthly being as my physical body deteriorated.

Dad’s here, somewhere, traveling along the same interstellar transit system. I can feel his presence. I’m becoming a part of him and him a part of me, along with the life force of all organisms. It’s not a price to pay, but a privilege to experience the familiarity among the vastness, one that we can tap into — a truth that Dad discovered on his own. Soon, I’ll be gone. Not really gone. Present somewhere else.

I’m being reborn on the rings of Saturn, music as my guide.