“Surreal @ Stanford” is an attempt to quantify the gaps and the bridges, the cold and the comforting, of attending Stanford. Whether it’s a first In-N-Out order or the sudden feeling of inadequacy, we’ve all undergone new things since our arrival. In this column, Tanya Rastogi ’29 seeks to explore that liminality.

At some point in many of our lives, we laid our hands on an instrument for the first time. How strange it felt, ice-cold under our hands, fashioned into holes and valves and bumps. We tried to make a sound. Maybe it worked, air flowing cleanly through metal, keys receptive to our touch. Maybe it didn’t, and we blew until we were red in the face or bloodied our fingertips pressing them into chords. Whatever happened that first go, some of us continued. Some of us spent hours with that instrument, slouched on its seat or holding it before a stand. Making sound, perfecting sound.

Then, some of us stopped. 

—

The first time I spoke with my roommate, shuffling ourselves and our parents around our suitcase-littered dorm, we found out that we had something in common: we both play the flute. 

Let me reword that — we both played the flute. Annecy still does, slipping out to Braun to practice in the evenings and attending regular lessons. I sometimes remember what it felt like to play for myself and others. Then I go to class or a club meeting or a hangout, and the memory disappears as quickly as a note in the air. 

It’s not that my relationship with music was ever transactional, something I did to pad my college app or satisfy my parents (mostly). It brought me real joy, real connections. I think most musicians, whether or not they’ve become disillusioned, can relate. But playing an instrument is difficult. It is both a mental commitment and a physical effort; plus in college — especially ones with extremely preprofessional environments, cough cough — it’s hard not to sell out. 

Frosh quarter is a perpetual state of having something to do. We can be bored, sure, but never idle. I don’t know how I could squeeze regular orchestra rehearsals into my Google Calendar, but sometimes I hear about the ensembles on campus and I wish I auditioned more broadly during all the chaos of NSO. One evening at dinner, Ahn, a percussionist in the Stanford Symphony, told me that those two units are worth it, that they give him something to look forward to amidst a heavy STEM-y workload. In that moment, I wished so deeply that I packed my flute months back in September. 

But — would I have committed to playing? Would it just have gathered dust under my dorm bed? It’s not as if I played diligently (or at all) during the summer…what if my skills have stagnated? Is music worth it at all as a non-major?

. . . 

All these hypotheticals, and in the thirty procrastinatory moments spent on this article, I haven’t picked up a paintbrush or written a line of poetry or continued trying to learn the ins and outs of the music production software I downloaded on a whim. Maybe we don’t find meaning by asking endless questions. Maybe we should make time for what we enjoy and just do it.