I must confess, I don’t normally start my pieces with a quote. Somehow, doing that takes me back to high school, blank composition paper and ink-stained pen on my desk, my nerves rattled under the steely gaze of my English professor, waiting for me to write that default derivative first line. Yet the quote compels me this time.
The excerpt goes: “The earth has its music, for those who will listen.” While often wrongly attributed to Shakespeare, the lovely line is from The Magic of Sound, a poem by Reginald Vincent Holmes, whose work—save for that particular piece—was largely considered obscure and, in truth, unremarkable. That bit from the poem’s last stanza, however, is bright with the melodies of a thousand destinations. You see, anyone who has traveled enough will tell you: each place has its own marked, multisensory “music” that makes for an immersive, inimitable experience.
