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Music Before the Page

My grandmother cannot read music. This is not to say she is not musical – quite the opposite. She sings in her community choir and hums constantly, absentmindedly, as though melody were simply another way of thinking. She learned songs the way one learns a story told at the dinner table: by hearing it, repeating it, reshaping it slightly each time. When I once tried to show her a page of sheet music, she looked at it for a moment, smiled politely (and rather blankly), and ha

Ava Tillman

Dec 20, 20253 min read

Hooked on Heartbreak

When I took piano lessons in elementary school, I would only practice pieces written in a minor key. In middle and high school, I almost exclusively listened to songs about heartbreak – of which, of course, I knew nothing about. And although I now realize that starting my day off by listening to Adele is just masochistic, my penchant for melancholy remains. There is a peculiar kind of joy in listening to music that makes us cry. Not the kind of crying we do when we break a

Ava Tillman

Nov 12, 20253 min read

Chemical Music

I’ve always thought of chemistry as the science of what we can’t see. Molecules, bonds, orbitals – they all exist at a scale so small that we rely on models, diagrams, and equations to make sense of them. Music, on the other hand, feels like the opposite, flooding into our ears and bodies in ways that feel impossible to describe. But the more I learn, the more I realize that chemistry and music are not opposites at all. In fact, they share a surprising intimacy. Both take inv

Ava Tillman

Sep 19, 20252 min read

Listen to the Birds

Most mornings, the birds outside my bedroom window start their shift before I do. Around 7:30am, like clockwork, a sparrow perches on the overgrown Japanese maple tree in my front yard and starts yelling – whether it’s a territorial dispute, a mating call, or some personal grievance, I have no idea. I used to find this quite annoying, especially before breakfast. But over time, I started to notice something: when I gave up on covering my head with a pillow and simply succumbe

Ava Tillman

Aug 16, 20253 min read