They say look to the future and don’t dwell on the past… well sometimes I think it’s good to wallow in memory for a bit.

I miss the presence of people. More specifically, making music with people. I miss being in the same room with one hundred other instruments with one hundred other people, all breathing the same air. We’d all breathe in together at the flick of the conductor’s baton to start the delicate downbeat of a piece. To make MUSIC. That was a powerful thing.

Picture this: Princeton’s Richardson Auditorium. I miss sitting in the back of the orchestra, feeling so concealed in the flurry of strings. But suddenly the music would give way to just the winds. Then just to the clarinets. It would just be us four clarinet players creating the music in the hall, our tones dark and rich and deep. These moments would be so surreal, I wouldn’t even know if it was really happening.

I miss having an audience. Picture this: the high school choir concert. A full house, packed with attentive listeners. I miss being nervous and jittery and brushing my sweaty palms on my shirt and walking out to greet the crowd. Then I’d sit at the piano bench with two hundred choir members to my left, waiting for the choir director’s nod to begin. And then I’d start playing and it would just be me at first, playing a soft melody, then two hundred voices would join in.

I miss the electricity. When Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 was played like never before. When the soloist performing Sibelius’s Violin Concerto executed that phrase just right. When the clarinet quartet stomped to the last beat of Armando’s Rhumba. When I smashed that last chord in Queen’s Somebody to Love and my hands flew from the keyboard up into the air while the choir sang the last note. With performances, there’s always this spark of something that fills your whole body and you feel like you could live forever off the adrenaline coursing through your veins. That is what I miss.

I also miss the small things. The nursing home visits. The Rotary performances. Little things for the community. I liked knowing that I was part of something larger and doing something good.

I miss rehearsal breaks, the before the concerts and the afters. The whirlwind picture-taking to remember each concert. And of course I miss the people. The people that made me, me. The various conductors who spouted wisdom at every rehearsal. The lifelong friends I have made who are now off to so many different places. I miss them all.