Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time

by Natalie Hodges

In the act of recording, writing, remembering, we chart our stories onto a particular path—one way, perhaps, that from our limited human perspective we can come to terms with the infinity of past paths not taken. Writing thus distorts our sense of our own time, but it also orients us in it and helps us give it meaning.

I’d spend the first part of the piece waiting for it, and the rest cursing myself for it.

humans don’t just hear beats—we feel beats,

Assimilation—perhaps more than any other crisis of identity—threatens to throw that balance out of whack. Its grief begins when you notice that the way others perceive you has begun to diverge from the way you see yourself.

She never could have been a Tiger Mother, not really, because all the rest of us had to do to make her happy was just wake up in the morning.

Am sobbing

I feel less, now, that I lost or gave up the chance to become a musician; rather that my being a musician was a necessary and wonderful thing, for the time that I was, and that eventually that time had to come to an end.