A Bouquet of Sharpened Pencils
August 2026“Hey Stan,” I said, leaning into the open office door.
He wore a light blue Oxford shirt, grey sweater vest, and khakis, his shoulders hunched as he typed on his laptop.
“I’m looking for a pencil with an eraser,” I said with a look of slight desperation, holding up a page of sheet music. I leaned over the baby gate in the doorway to pet Stella the pug, who got up from her plush bed and waddled over to greet me. He stood and turned in one motion (the room no bigger than a walk-in closet) and rustled through a mug of pencils, points down, all with plush pink erasers.
“I collect lost and discarded pencils,” he said, plucking one from the bouquet and inserting the point into an electric sharpener. “Because I find no one appreciates a sharpened pencil quite like a musician,” he said. He held the pencil lightly between his thumb and index finger as he presented it to me with a smile.
I’ve been thinking about this encounter—things lost or discarded, things we collect and appreciate in our work. Moments, ideas, questions.
Maybe it's the lost art of curiosity. Choosing a question-oriented mindset over an answer-oriented one—made all the more difficult in the age of AI. Maybe it's a willingness to sit with unanswered questions for a while (remember when we didn't always have immediate answers to everything?). The forgotten ability to speculate, investigate, and wonder.
Maybe it's an intentional slowing down. Writing by hand (with a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil) instead of typing. Doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, and obsessing over quality, as I talk about in Ep. 098.
Maybe as musicians, we do appreciate these things more than others. Maybe we do have a deeper respect for the process, a willingness to explore and sit with unanswered questions, a propensity to collect lost things.
Here, at the beginning of a new school year, I'm gathering a bouquet of sharpened pencils and considering what they represent. Curiosity, wonder, slowness. What are you collecting as you start a new teaching year?
