There was a conductor who spent his life learning how to shape sound. He knew more than one language. Italian when rehearsing Verdi, German for Brahms, French for Debussy. One evening, he sat alone on the podium. Everyone left. Silence seemed louder than the symphony. He thought about the tongues he bent his mouth around, the clipped rhythms of English, warmth Spanish, precision of Japanese, the vowels of Finnish. Each just people teaching how to shape air. An oboe player told a joke in Portuguese, a percussionist cursed in Polish, violinists whispered in Russian. Same laughter, same impatience, same joy to gossip. It struck him that language was perhaps just sound rehearsals, mouth to mouth. In that moment he laughed the laugh of seeing all the languages were not separate towers of Babel at war, but voice orchestras. The next night, he felt as if he were standing before humanity itself, holding its one voice in his hands