London enjoys a lot of the same music I do. While driving across town I might listen to the score from Dune 2 or Oppenheimer. We love a big, vibrant, orchestral soundtrack.
Since she first heard “Can You Hear the Music” from Ludwig Göransson’s stirring score for Oppenheimer, it has been one of our favorites.
I love it because I think it is the perfect musical representation of what happens in London’s head when she gets an idea. There is this sudden, crystal clear motivation to develop, build, and perfect the idea. She sees all angles of it at once and wants to work on all angles at once, even though that’s not possible. As the short song rapidly increases tempo, so are her thoughts flying at her faster and faster, bouncing every which way in her head.
The glorious crescendo of the song races at you like a freight train. There are so many layers to the song, so much going on. You can’t pick one part apart from the other. At the end, it’s noise. It’s chaos. But London hears the music, I think she’s heard something like this before, but just in her head. I’ll never know what that sounded like, but Göransson seems to have perfectly bottled it up in a one-minute, 50-second song. I think London loves the song because it’s her. It’s the soundtrack to her mind. It’s everything all at once at a speed I can’t keep up with, but watching it in her is one of the greatest blessings of my life.
She turns 12 on Friday. Like the music, our lives are speeding up. Time seems to be accelerating at a faster rate as I age and watch her grow. It feels like the song getting faster and faster, closing in on a crescendo, a zenith. But we certainly aren’t there yet. For now, I’m so grateful to be on the journey with someone who can hear the music. I need to stop every once in a while and ask her what it sounds like because I don’t hear the way she hears. That’s the mystery and beauty of it all.
Happy Birthday, London. Your Dad loves you.
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