I remember, for my fifth birthday, Chet Baker sat me on the

Host: The night had fallen over the old recording studio like a velvet curtain. Through the large windows, the city lights flickered—yellow, blue, white, like distant notes trembling on an unseen score. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of dust, coffee, and the faint electric hum of sleeping instruments. A grand piano stood in the center, its black surface reflecting the ghostly glow of a single lamp.

Jack sat on the edge of the piano bench, fingers tapping idly on the keys without pressing them. Jeeny stood nearby, her hands wrapped around a cup of lukewarm tea, her eyes fixed on the microphone stand in the corner as if listening to something unheard.

Jeeny: “You ever think about what Jarre said? That he could feel the sound? That it wasn’t just something he heard?”

Jack: “I remember the quote. ‘My first physical contact with sound,’ right? Sounds poetic. But it’s not magic, Jeeny. It’s just physics — vibration, air pressure, resonance. You feel it because sound is touch. That’s not transcendence. That’s anatomy.”

Host: Jack’s voice was low, calm, yet it carried the weight of a man who’d dismantled too many illusions. Jeeny took a slow sip, her eyes not leaving him.

Jeeny: “You always stop at the surface, Jack. Yes, sound is vibration. But there’s something else in it — a kind of soul. When Jarre said he felt it in his chest, he wasn’t describing physics. He was describing connection. The way a note can make you remember your mother, or your first heartbreak. That’s not measurable.”

Jack: “You romanticize it because you want to. You want meaning in every note, every word, every breath of air. But sound doesn’t care. The universe doesn’t care. You could fill this room with music or screams — the air will still just move.”

Host: A faint hum escaped the piano as Jack pressed a single key — middle C. The note trembled in the air, then dissolved into silence.

Jack: “See that? It lives for a moment and dies. Like everything else.”

Jeeny: “But it lived, Jack. That’s the point.”

Host: The lamp flickered, casting shadows that stretched like old memories across the floorboards.

Jeeny: “Do you know what Chet Baker was known for, besides his music?”

Jack: “For dying too young. For wasting his talent.”

Jeeny: “No. For feeling. For the way his trumpet could ache. When Jarre was five, he wasn’t hearing technique — he was absorbing another human being’s sorrow, his tenderness. That moment shaped him. You don’t think that’s real?”

Jack: “It’s real as an experience, sure. But that’s the illusion of art — it makes you believe in meaning where there’s just chemistry. You hear a minor chord, your brain releases a pattern of responses. It’s predictable. Even the sadness in Baker’s horn was biology.”

Jeeny: “Then why did people cry, Jack? Why did whole rooms fall silent when he played? You think thousands of people shared the same hallucination?”

Jack: “They shared the same wiring.”

Host: The rain began to tap softly on the windows, a rhythm almost too gentle to notice. Jeeny moved closer to the piano, her reflection merging with Jack’s in the glossy lid.

Jeeny: “You sound like those scientists who think love is just a chemical rush. You keep dissecting everything until nothing’s left alive.”

Jack: “Because once you peel off the poetry, that’s all there is — biology and decay. You can’t touch sound without accepting that it fades.”

Jeeny: “Maybe it fades in air, but not in us.”

Host: Jeeny placed her hand over her heart as if feeling the echo of an invisible melody.

Jeeny: “Think about it, Jack. Beethoven couldn’t hear a single note, yet he felt it. When he conducted the Ninth Symphony, deaf and trembling, the audience was weeping, and he didn’t even know it. He couldn’t hear their applause. But he felt it through the floor, through the vibrations in the air. Isn’t that what Jarre meant? The physical contact of spirit through sound?”

Jack: “Or maybe Beethoven was just obsessed. Obsessed enough to keep writing even after silence swallowed him. That’s not divine. That’s stubborn.”

Jeeny: “No. That’s human. And that’s the miracle.”

Host: The silence after her words was sharp — a silence that seemed to hum with meaning. The rain grew louder, and the piano’s surface shimmered with reflections like broken glass.

Jack: “You talk about miracles, but I see patterns. You talk about connection, but we’re all locked in our own heads, Jeeny. Sound doesn’t unite us — it tricks us into thinking we’re less alone.”

Jeeny: “Then why are you here, Jack? In this empty studio, at midnight, touching those keys like they’re sacred?”

Host: Jack froze. His fingers stopped just above the ivory keys. For a moment, his grey eyes softened — the faintest crack in his armor.

Jack: “Because sometimes… I need the lie.”

Host: His voice trembled — not much, but enough for Jeeny to hear it. She set her cup down gently, the ceramic clinking against the wood like a muted heartbeat.

Jeeny: “It’s not a lie, Jack. It’s the only truth we have. The one that doesn’t need words.”

Jack: “So what, you think music is a language of the soul?”

Jeeny: “I think it’s the sound of being alive.”

Host: The room was bathed in the dim yellow light. A clock ticked somewhere behind them, counting the seconds between disbelief and wonder.

Jack: “You know, when I was a kid, my father used to play old vinyls in the living room. Jazz, mostly. He never said much. One day I asked him why he liked Miles Davis, and he said, ‘Because it sounds like thinking.’ I didn’t get it then.”

Jeeny: “Do you get it now?”

Jack: “Maybe. Maybe it’s what you said. Maybe sound is how we touch what we can’t name.”

Host: Jeeny smiled — not triumphant, but tender, as if she’d just watched a wound begin to heal.

Jeeny: “Exactly. That’s why Jarre remembered it so vividly — not because it was Chet Baker, not because it was music, but because for the first time, he felt the world reach out and touch him back.”

Jack: “And you think that touch stays with us?”

Jeeny: “Always. Even when the notes fade.”

Host: The rain had stopped now. The air hung still, filled with the faint smell of ozone and old wood. Jack pressed a key again — a single low note, deep and resonant. It rolled through the room like a pulse.

Jack: “You ever think maybe sound remembers us too? That every vibration leaves a mark somewhere?”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what echoes are — memories that refuse to die.”

Host: They both sat in silence, listening to the last vibration vanish into the stillness. Outside, the city continued its endless symphony — sirens, footsteps, the distant hum of a train.

Jack: “So maybe we agree, then. Sound is both — the science and the soul.”

Jeeny: “Like us. The body and the breath.”

Host: A faint smile crossed Jack’s face, small but honest. Jeeny leaned her head against the piano, her eyes closing as if listening to the invisible music between them.

Host: The lamplight dimmed, and the piano’s shadow stretched long across the floor. Outside, the moonlight fell through the window, pooling around them — two souls caught between silence and sound, between reason and feeling, between the world they could measure and the one they could only remember.