Apr
First Time – Every Time
Do you remember the first time you… well, fill in the blank.
A wonderful Life Skill is the ability to recreate the first time a you experienced something. There is magic in first times.
A bit of a tune from my past started playing itself in my ear, as tunes often do for me. It was orchestral, and lively, and I knew that I knew it. The problem was, it was only a few bars long. I tried to remember it, to pull out more of the melody, but it didn’t happen. So, I went back to work on another blog posting. That was all it took. The music came back in full. It was Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. Music I loved, and apparently memorized as a child.
Digging out an old copy and playing it, I knew every note, every word of the narrator, and I found myself transported back to 2nd or 3rd grade when the music was introduced to me.
What, I wondered, had it been like that first time I’d heard this classic? Thinking about it brought up the first time I’d ever heard “The Hall of the Mountain King” from Peer Gynt.
And that got me wondering about first times.
I can almost recall the magic I felt when I first heard these wonderful pieces of music. Of course much of the magic was in the heart and spirit of the teachers who loved the pieces so much that they shared not just the music, but their own caring. I remember sitting in a darkened classroom each time–the teachers being wise enough to hide most other distractions, and listening to the music. I remember seeing Peter, the Cat, the Bird, the Wolf and the Hunters. I remember seeing the huge Hall of the mountain king, although none of these were described. I remember being safe, and warm, and wholly involved in magnificent music. I know that in both cases the music was played on an old, portable phonograph, but my memory recreates the experience with Music Hall depth and clarity.
If you started reading this hoping to find the trick to recreating first times, I’m sorry to disappoint. The only thing I can do is to wonder. There clearly is magic in first times, even first times of sadness or horror, because, I believe, it is in those moments of extreme mental excitation that much of who we are is formed.
Can you do it? Can you recreate a first time for someone?
