Graduation day for Westminster Choir College! We arrived at 9:35 for what we thought was a 9:30 opening time, but Princeton Chapel was already two-thirds full. Though not nearly as tall as Notre Dame de Paris, it’s three times as long; from the back, humans in the choir look like ants. So we sat in the most distal portion of the transept, with a very good view of the front of the choir, where the exchange of handshakes and diploma-placeholders would occur, but blind to all else both right and left of the crossing.

We primarily heard rather than saw the three-hour ceremony.

A small choir college, WCC requires all students to attend every graduation, creating a well-trained choir of about 300 voices. Combined with Princeton Chapel’s 8000-pipe organ and an invited professional brass and percussion ensemble, the music can be felt as well as heard, seeming to reach toward the ear of God.

As my gaze idly explored the crowd, the vault, the towering walls of stained glass, the massive columns flanking the aisle, I noticed that the view seemed to change with the texture of the music. As the musical mood ranged from contemplative to triumphant, from beseeching to joyous, the structure, people, and even the airy space seemed to waft gently, preen, quaver, or glow.

I have often experienced this form of synesthesia. While driving through a crowded city, changing my car radio from classical to rock to folk changes the apparent mood of the pedestrians from graceful and dignified, to hurried and driven, to friendly and relaxed. Drizzle striking the window may change from chilling to comforting when I change my headphone feed.

A view-changing sound may not be musical. Sunny, birdsong-filled woods become a menacing challenge to survival with the addition of a scream, a snarl, or even a twig crunched by an alien footfall. Participants trapped in an acrimonious meeting may view the conference room as a torture cell until someone enters carrying a cooing baby, changing it into a tot lot. When I’ve lost my keys, the friendly, useful items on my bedside table become sneering clutter-monsters, conspiring to hide and confuse. The sound in that last case is my keening.

Experiencing such things is a crucial part of the fabric of life, a much better way of knowing you are alive then, say, the fact that your fingernails are growing. I think I am too old to be a candidate to have my personality stored in the Cloud, but even if it did happen, I don’t think I would be alive in any meaningful sense.