The man on the right was my father, Frank. In this still, he’s singing in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Chorus during a European tour under the baton of a famous conductor. I was a few months old. It wasn’t until after he died in 2023 that this video was discovered on YouTube by a friend from the Lyric Opera Orchestra, where my father spent nearly 30 years in the viola section.
Some years before, my Dad had a Waldo moment of his own while watching old baseball games, also on YouTube. There’s a clip where the camera zooms chaotically up over Wrigley Field to settle on some people watching from a nearby rooftop. There he was, even younger, in a questionable shirt. I can’t find it now.
The summer after he died, my brothers and I were helping my mom pack up the apartment she and my father lived in for ten years. I found this taped to the back of the door to his practice studio behind a bulletin board.
Ben Babbitt is a musician and artist based in Los Angeles. As a composer, he has worked on feature films like The African Desperate, My First Film, and Paris Window and produced work for artists including Eartheater, Angel Olsen, Weyes Blood, and Colin Self. He makes his own music under the moniker Enhancement and, together with writer Steph Kretowicz, as the band Ultra Instinct.
