From “One, Two, Three . . . Infinity,” an essay in the anthology Ways of Hearing, which will be published this month by Princeton University Press.

My father wanted his own orchestra. He couldn’t read music and his tastes tended toward the beer hall, but he loved singing and had a clear bass-baritone: “Blue Skies” at morning that changed, by night, to “Many Brave Hearts Are Asleep in the Deep.” When he sang, our small house on the North Side of Chicago turned bigger on the inside than it was on the out.

A junior high school principal, my father believed…