(N.B.: Datestamp is overly precise; I only know this was written sometime during the college application process.)

For WU: What particular creative work (book, poem, play, film, piece of visual art, musical composition, scientific theory, etc.) has been crucial to the way you see the world and see yourself? Discuss its effect on you.

Over the last year I have learned to play thirteen of Debussy's twenty-four Preludes for the piano — a rate of one Prelude per month. When my teacher noted that I mastered these pieces much more rapidly than those of other composers, I explained that I wasn't really learning anything, that Debussy happened to write what I had always heard in my mind, that if I were to imagine music that demonstrated and reached the potential of the piano, it would sound exactly like his. I value the Preludes so highly that I wrote an English paper defining art by generalizing the merits of one of them. When I listen to the collection from start to finish (even though Debussy did not intend them to be performed as a complete set), it always seems that the one I am listening to right now, with its misty chord changes and moist, ambient melodies, is the best music on the planet. Then I hear the next one and it's even better. Comparing Preludes is like comparing infinities.

Still, as a number theorist could tell you, some infinities are larger than others, and one of these stands out. While all the Preludes are thick with color and depth, most are somber in tone. But “Les Collines d'Anacapri” (Book 1, No. 5) is indisputably exultant. Chords march up and down the keyboard like feet on a hill; quiet, minimalist passages add volume by increments until they reach the top, with enormous resonance and vision, and slow imperceptibly to have a look around. “Anacapri” is an obdurately undulating wave of joy, an explosion of impatient fireworks, and coasting, waiting for the next joy. There is only happiness and its temporary absence. There is no sadness. I, too, do not permit sadness in my personal domain. I want to attack the hills of life, see the land below, and move on to the next climb. The world offers too much for one to waste time lamenting a lost opportunity.