My first night in Peru, I sat on my patio and opened a notebook to write.

I’d come here to find peace. My life had been upended recently—a 6-year relationship ended; the house I’d wanted to buy had fallen through. The future I’d imagined had dissolved, and I felt lost and uncertain.

Here, though, listening to the waves, I could rest.

🌊

I went to put music on, and chose Erik Satie, a French composer who was the subject of a novel I was reading.

I’d studied Satie in college, and I remembered my old disdain for him, my youthful boredom with anything that simple. I wanted more notes! More surprise! More dissonance!

But now, Satie’s music held the waves as if that had been his intent. The notes came slowly, with long pauses between. It made a beautiful duet, and the more I listened, the more my thoughts slowed.

🎵

Most musicians fill the air with sound. Even Debussy, who said “music is the space between notes,” sounds crowded compared to Satie. His music is no dance partner for the waves.

Satie said explicitly that he didn’t want people to notice his music. Rather, he wanted it to play in the background, and maybe days later they’d catch themselves humming a tune, and think “Now where did that come from?”

💭

Those first few weeks in Peru, I listened to Satie a lot, reveling in its graceful, open sound, grateful for the profound peace that it brought.

I could never have imagined that Satie would become so special to me, years back when I derided his music for being exactly what he wanted it to be. For being exactly what I would someday want and need.

Like Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.”

As we live each dot, we have no idea which will form a line, a story, a melody. We can only hear that melody by living, and by one day looking back.

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