Crazy thoughts? We all have them from time to time. But this weekend, I had a doozy.
Sitting in rehearsal with The Symphony of the Mountains for our side-by-side concert of Movie Music with area high schoolers, I was playing along when—like all brass players must—I needed to empty my slides. (“spittious-accumulatious” for the uninitiated.)
I looked down at the fresh pattern on the floor left by my most recent…ejection…and a thought struck me. (Naturally, I had to share it with the second horn.)
What if… each emptying of those slides was actually a ‘Big Bang’ event, creating a new universe? One with an accelerated timeline, where entire civilizations rise and fall before the liquid fully evaporates?
Interesting? Crazy? Probably both. But let’s entertain the idea for a moment.
If true, that would make every brass player (not just you trumpets) a literal god of creation, unknowingly spawning and annihilating entire universes with each practice session. A quick warm-up? A dozen civilizations emerge, build great wonders, and crumble into dust before you even finish your long tones. A full rehearsal? Trillions of galaxies form, evolve, and vanish—all before the conductor finally decides on a tempo.
Now imagine the beings in these universes, developing philosophies, sciences, and religions, all to explain their existence—never realizing their entire cosmos is just the byproduct of a particularly humid day in the brass section.
And what if some of them figured it out? What if their hyper-accelerated advancements allowed them to glimpse the horrifying truth—that their fate rests in the hands of an unknowable entity called The Horn Player? Would they send desperate signals, pleading for just a few more bars of existence? Would they develop reality-slowing technology to stretch their time before the inevitable evaporation?
And then, of course, the ultimate, terrifying question: what if our universe is just some celestial tuba player’s spit valve drainage, hurtling toward its own inevitable demise?
But wait—there’s more.
What if the music we play at the moment of slide dumping influences the type of universes we create? If so, then this particular concert—starting with Also sprach Zarathustra, followed by the William Tell Overture, then Barbie Girl, and concluding with Mars from The Planets—just birthed some truly wild realities.
A universe of mystery and strange obelisks? A universe of galloping horses and heroic archers? A universe of plastic, malleable individuals with a tendency to misplace their clothes? And finally, a universe full of war and destruction!
What horrors have I unleashed?! Ah well, at least they will evaporate quickly. Maybe we should explore this more after my next gig? Those could be truly momentous!!
© 2025, Robert Owen. All rights reserved.
