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Speaker 1: US Studios The Music box Collection. In a small apartment

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on the third floor of a brown brick building, there

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lived a woman named Melody who collected music boxes. She

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had fifty of them, gathered over the course of thirty

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years from flea markets and estate sales and quiet corners

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of antique shops. They sat on wooden shelves that lined

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one entire wall of her living room, each one different

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in size and shape and tone. Some were tiny, no

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larger than a walnut, with delicate brass mechanisms that turned

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almost faster than the eye could follow. Others were larger,

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wooden boxes with hinged lids and brass keys that needed

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winding with careful, steady turns of the wrist. On quiet evenings,

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when the world outside her window grew dark and the

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street below grew still, Melody would settle into the old

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armchair by the lamp and begin to wind them. She

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would start with the smallest, a tiny silver thing she

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had found in her grandmother's attic when she was seven

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years old. Its tune was only twelve notes long, but

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it was a tune she had known all her life,

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and it sounded like the first warm day of spring.

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Then she would wind, the next and the next, moving

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along the shelves in a slow, deliberate order she had

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developed over the years. Each box played a different song.

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Some were classical fragments of pieces she half remembered from

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childhood piano lessons. Some were folk tunes, melodies that had

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been carried across oceans by immigrants long ago. Some were lullabies,

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simple and repetitive, the kind of songs that mothers hum

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without thinking. And some were melodies that had no name

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at all, just sequences of notes that someone had arranged

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once and that had survived in the mechanism of the

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box long after the composer had been forgotten. On this

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particular evening, the rain was falling outside, a soft, steady

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rain that tapped against the window like a thousand small fingers.

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Melody had lit the lamp and made herself a cup

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of tea, and now she was winding her way through

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the collection. The smallest box sang its twelve notes. Then

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a wooden box shaped like a miniature piano played a

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chopin waltz. Then a round tin box with a picture

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of a windmill on the lid played something Dutch and bright.

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The music filled the room slowly, layer upon layer, like

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drops of paint falling onto a wet canvas. At first,

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the melodies were distinct, each one clearly separate from the others.

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But as she wound more boxes, the songs began to

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overlap and blend, weaving together into something new, something that

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was not any single melody but was all of them

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at once. The sound was strange and beautiful, like hearing

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a hundred different conversations happening in the same room and

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finding that they somehow made sense together. Melody sat back

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in her chair and listened. The rain continued outside, the

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tea grew cooler on the small table beside her, and

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the music boxes sang on, their tiny mechanisms, turning slowly,

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their little bells and combs and cylinders, doing what they

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had been built to do so many years ago by

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craftspeople whose names no one remembered. The room was warm,

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and the light from the lamp was soft, and the

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music was complicated and imperfect and full of strange harmonies

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that should not have worked. But did. She thought about

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how each box had arrived in her collection. The silver

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wand had come from her grandmother, who had told her

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it was older than anyone could remember. The wooden piano

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shaped box had been a gift from her father on

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her twelfth birthday, bought from a shop in the city

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that had long since closed. The round tin box with

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the windmill had been found at a flea market in

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a town she could not name any more, bought for

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two dollars from a man who had seemed glad to

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see it go. Each box had its own story, its

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own history, its own particular way of being alive. There

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was a box she had bought for her husband when

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they were first married, a small mahogany thing with brass

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feet that played their wedding song. He had died eight

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years ago, and the box still sat on the shelf,

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but she had not wound it in years. She was

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not ready. Some songs were too close to the heart

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to play without crying, and she had learned to be

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careful about when she allowed herself to cry. The music continued,

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the harmonies built and shifted. The rain tapped on the window,

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the tea cooled, and Melody listened with her eyes half closed,

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letting the layered melodies wash over her the way a

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bath washes over a tired body. The music was not

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sad exactly, but it was not entirely happy either. It

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was something in between, something that acknowledged the passing of

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years and the smallness of any single life, but also

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the great, quiet persistence of beauty in the world. After

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a while, the boxes began to wind down one by one.

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The tin windmill box slowed first, its tune trailing off

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into silence, then the wooden piano, then the silver grandmother box.

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The larger ones kept going for a while, their longer

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songs playing out at their own pace, but eventually they

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too fell quiet, and the room grew still except for

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the sound of the rain. Melody opened her eyes that

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looked around. The lamp was glowing warmly, The shelves were

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lined with their silent cargo. The rain was still falling.

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She thought about how strange it was that such tiny

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machines could make such beautiful sounds, and how strange it

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was that she had spent thirty years gathering them, and

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how strange it was that on a rainy evening like

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this one they could make her feel so completely at peace.

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She rose from her chair and walked to the window. Outside.

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The street lights were glowing softly through the rain, and

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the trees along the sidewalk were dark and still. She

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pressed her hand against the cold glass and stood there

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for a long moment, breathing slowly, listening to the last

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of the rain. Tomorrow she would wind the boxes again.

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Tomorrow the songs would rise and fall and overlap and

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weave together into something strange and beautiful. Tomorrow the room

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would fill with the sound of fifty small voices, singing

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their own songs at the same time. But for now,

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the room was quiet, and melody was ready to sleep,

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and the rain was still falling. And that was enough.

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That was more than enough.