Tag: music
-
a gift, not a given
“I was in a gang growing up.” “I’m a slam poet. I actually have a show on Friday if anyone is free.” “I just moved here from Berlin.” Well, geez. How was I supposed to follow those? I was 21, in a two-week training that kicked off my AmeriCorps year, faced with the hated icebreaker…
-
the silliness of thinking…
When I was 19, I spent a month in Ghana. Inexplicably, in the months leading up to this, I pinned a strange hope on that trip: that when I came back, I’d be able to improvise on piano. (This is exactly as illogical as it sounds. True, I would be taking drum lessons and a…
-
music of waves
When I got to Punta Negra – a tiny, quiet beach town about 30 miles south of Lima – the first thing I noticed was the slow, bassy build of the waves. They were the biggest I’d ever seen, the loudest and slowest I’d ever heard. They crashed one by one, a slow motion metronome,…
-
in pursuit of a piano
Adults are always telling kids they can be anything they want. But is that true? On paper, maybe, in places with lots of upward mobility. But on an existential level? Aren’t we inexorably drawn to certain things, by virtue of what we’re actually good at and interested in? I remember one day during my first…
Kimberly Bunker, MFA 