How life is the Sum of all Awe!
Listen to Awe Sum
Awe Sum
Two memories merge in this piece: a visit to the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and the day a small traveling circus set up in the empty lot beside the railroad tracks of my hometown of Nickerson, Kansas. In both places, the shrill voice of the calliope served as a summons — not merely to entertainment, but to wonder itself.
Nickerson was a town of about a thousand people, small enough that a child could roam its entire square mile on a bicycle and know nearly everyone by sight. Life unfolded within a web of familiar faces, predictable routines, and inherited assumptions. When the circus arrived — tents rising overnight, banners flapping, music echoing across the streets — it felt as though the wider world had briefly come to visit.
The experience was modest by metropolitan standards, a family operation where performers also ran the games and concessions. Yet its impact was immense. For children whose universe was bounded by school, church, and a handful of blocks, the circus represented the Sum of all Awe: color, risk, mystery, and possibility condensed into a single afternoon.
As life carried me from that tiny town into larger communities and a rapidly changing culture, I came to see that such moments of shared wonder were not trivial diversions but essential nourishment. Even as small towns appear to fade under economic and technological pressures, the human need for close-knit community — and for occasional encounters with the extraordinary — persists.
The music begins where that memory begins: with a jubilant calliope cry that quickly slips into a more unsettling register, echoing the sense that awe is never purely innocent. It enlarges us, but it also reminds us how small our familiar world really is.
The complete essay appears in the book Music and Musings: Essays and Orchestrations.
