A Passionate Affair by Zadok Lamar written Fall, 1995 We were introduced in late '62. The rhythmic stirring of a beating heart was the first intimation of the joy I would soon know. The stinging slap on my cheek was the catalyst that forced my self-expression. I grimaced; I cried. And this cry began my affair with sound. I emerged from my mother's sanctuary and was born. Although neither parent was a musician, both had a vast and varied appreciation of music. The intercom system in our house had a speaker in each room and the sounds of the radio permeated every space. If singing to the airwaves bored me, I took out the Lincoln Logs can, dumped all contents on the floor and proceeded to beat out a rhythm on the tin bottom. In a quest for fidelity, my Uncle Mac provided me with one of his numerous snare drums. He had been a popular bandleader in the 1940s, but thought he should get a "real" job in animal nutrition. I believe he lived vicariously through my pursuit of sound. Home life was full of audible extremes. Grandmother lived with us and was rapidly going deaf. Father had a stroke before I was born and the only clear words he spoke were the loud ones. Mother worked as a Bell operator. She was graded daily on her tone and volume levels which made her rather soft, mild and metered in comparison. When you put us all in one place competing to be heard, friends hearing us over the phone would liken us to "The Loud Family" (a popular skit on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s). This love affair blossomed fully when I attended a special middle school. Instrumental lessons were part of the curriculum. I plunged right into all of them. I took chorus, organ, drum, recorder, guitar, bugle and trumpet in band. But, to my ultimate disappointment, I soon realized that, although I reveled in the power of the notes being struck, I trembled at the prospect of performing before an audience. I felt too close to the music. It was as if this practiced, technical set of movements could somehow render my emotional walls transparent.