Horn player musings of creation – from the second performance.
Warm-Up
Warm-up is a strange place.
Nothing officially counts, yet everything matters. Notes are tested, breath is measured, confidence negotiated quietly with physics. It is preparation, but also possibility.
Looking down between my feet during warm-up, I saw it again.
New universes.
Not fully formed. Not confident. Small clusters and scattered points, practice universes. Places where physics was still flexible, where civilizations evolved quickly and reset often. These were forgiving worlds, built on repetition and adjustment. Failure was expected. Progress came through trying again.
They understood tone before melody. Breath before phrase. Intention before certainty.
They knew something important was coming.
The Creator’s feet were close now. Weight shifting. Balance being tested. The universes interpreted this as prophecy.
Warm-up ended.
They would not survive unchanged.
Knell
The concert began again in earnest.
The first piece was Knell.
During rests, I looked down between my feet and saw the warm-up universes already fading. Not abruptly. Not violently. They were thinning, edges softening, light dimming. Entire lives rose and ended quickly, efficiently.
This was the work of Knell.
A testimony in sound and consequence. Civilizations experienced their full arc in moments. Birth, struggle, acceptance. There was no resistance. Knell does not argue. It states.
Endings were not tragedies. They were facts.
Brahms
And then came Brahms.
The Violin Concerto returned, and with it, abundance.
My solos: glorious. lol
The soloist: glorious-er.
Looking down again during rests, I saw civilizations surge back into existence, denser this time. Ambitious. Emotional. These were societies that built not because they had to, but because they could. Beauty became a driving force. Excess was tolerated. Longing preceded logic.
Some collapsed under their own weight. Others burned brilliantly and briefly.
They came and went to the glory of Brahms.
After the concerto ended, after the applause settled into gratitude, the soloist returned.
An encore.
Danny Boy.
Soft. Simple. Unprotected.
At my feet, what remained were not empires or expansions, just remnants. Droplets. Faint points of light clinging to existence. Not civilizations, but memories. Echoes.
Danny Boy does not create worlds.
It leaves something harder to erase.
Sibelius
Then came Sibelius.
Sibelius ended in a glorious wall of French horn sound, unapologetic, massive, inevitable. Each horn player sitting in their own space, each with their own small areas of creation beneath them.
Universes formed independently, yet together.
Each with their own histories.
Their own technologies.
Their own lives.
Some were young. Some impossibly old. All complete.
These players created wonder, not only in the sound sent into the hall, but in the lives briefly formed below their chairs. Entire civilizations rose, adapted, struggled, and ended in the time it took the final chord to fade.
No two were the same.
None were accidental.
The floor would dry.
The lights would come up.
The audience would leave thinking the work was finished.
But the next time you attend the symphony, know this:
Creation is happening.
In multiple ways.
Above the stage.
And quietly, below it.
Until the next gig.
© 2026, Robert Owen. All rights reserved.
