It’s a tired topic, but it’s one that still enslaves the minds of people with good imaginations or memories. It’s called ephemerality.
It’s the notion that even the present is the immediate past. It’s the idea that what you have will be lost before you know it.
In its shadow, we are burdened with the task of taking advantage of the time that we have. We are forced to be productive.
Take college for example. In about four years, we have to set the foundations for our professional lives. We need to decide what we want professionally first. We must figure out our socio-political identities, and most fleeting of all, forge some of the best memories we are likely to collect in our entire existences.
It’s no wonder the UF freshman preview orientation offers us the F Book, which is full of activities for students to accomplish before leaving our alma mater. I’ll admit I originally thought it was kind of gimmicky. I assumed UF hands students these mass-produced experiences so those students can be counted on to donate money after graduation as an expression of their gratitude — not that there is anything wrong with that.
But I guess I now like to think of the F Book as just a starting point for those who would otherwise feel alienated in this bulky university.
Granted, students usually find there is, in fact, too much to do.
There are more than 975 registered student organizations, more gyms than I’ve bothered counting, at least as many restaurants and a smorgasbord of department-run activities geared at expanding our horizons.
Even then, in the ruckus of our lives here, how can we prioritize the more charming activities this campus has to offer?
I guess the F Book might not be a bad place to start.
Some of my favorite places at UF are listed there. There’s Lake Alice, the Bat House and the Baughman Center.
My personal favorite is Century Tower.
There’s not much on the inside. It looks like 11.5 levels of basement — 12.5 levels if you count the actual basement — along with another couple of stories of belfry that no one ever gets to see because of safety regulations.
Still, the magic of Century Tower is not how it looks but how it sounds. In that belfry are 61 finely tuned bronze bells flown in from the Netherlands as part of an instrument called the carillon. And those who play this instrument, which is activated from the 11th floor by a wooden console, participate in a tradition that stretches back before the onset of the iPod and public radio.
It’s a fun and eclectic constant in our little world of impermanence.
I started off as a freshman at UF, listening to every afternoon recital performed from Century Tower.
And although the carillonneurs didn’t play much popular music — because of copyright restrictions and the temperament of the instrument — their performances left me with a new kind of enchantment. To me, it was the sound of the UF campus.
I was lucky enough to audition and become a member of the UF Carillon Studio for a while and play the bells myself. And just like most people find their niche on campus, the studio became mine.
Now that I’ve left, I can say for sure how special it was. There is nothing like leaving class and listening to a recital in the open air in the heat of summer or the cold of winter. There is nothing like falling asleep under a tree to your own personal serenade or waking up to haunting, thunderous chords beaten out of tons of bronze hundreds of feet above you.
Before you know it, it is gone, just like every other moment in your life. But at least it sets the tone. It resonates.
Harold A. Rocha has a Bachelor of Science in public relations and graduated from UF in the spring.
