Composing Your Dreams: The Music of Hans Zimmer

Composing Your Dreams

If you’ve ever seen any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, or watched the Academy Awards this year, you’ve heard the music of Hans Zimmer. He has composed music for The Ring, Kung Fu Panda, and everything in between. Before he wrote music for The Dark Knight, Zimmer was composing music for Air-Adel Associates – specifically, ad jingles.

I’m always fascinated by people who have achieved their dreams and can still look back fondly on times they had before they “made it.” It’s more than remembering where they came from. Many celebrities and successful people can reminisce about their struggle to get to the top, but precious few remind us of a very important fact of life: enjoying the journey won’t keep you from reaching the destination.

While reading up on Hans Zimmer, I came upon this quote in reference to writing the theme music for a UK game show:

“[It] was a lot of fun. It’s the sort of stuff you do when you don’t have a career yet. God, I just felt so lucky because this thing paid my rent for the longest time.”

It’s this positive, humble attitude – even moreso than his music – that makes Hans Zimmer a great man to watch and listen to.

A few months ago I was filing – the low-level employee’s bread and butter – when I came upon a balloon with the company logo printed on it. Before I knew it, my supervisor had cranked up the music and declared that the whole department was to get up and dance. We played a game of “keep it up” and got the balloon stuck in the light fixture. As I watched a tall coworker poke at the trapped balloon, I felt a pang of despair that I was leaving this wonderful place for grad school in the fall. A jolt of panic shot through me – was I letting myself get distracted from my ultimate goal of being a college professor by an entry-level position, my very first job out of college? How could I possibly achieve my goals if I allowed myself to be sidetracked by such frivolity? I thought I couldn’t afford to love anything less than my absolute dream job.

Hans Zimmer’s big break came when he composed the score for Rain Man. Looking at his profile on IMDB, it’s hard to believe he had enough time to put his pants on in the morning what with all of the movies, tv shows, shorts, and more that he’s composed for. For all of that, his greatest achievement is getting to the top of his profession while loving what he was doing along the way. He kept his focus and was grateful for every opportunity to learn and grow (and pay the rent). Thanks to Hans Zimmer, I have realized that my dreams won’t go up in smoke just because I spend the occasional lunch break eating out with my coworkers instead of sitting in my car reading critical essays. I hope you will take a page from Hans Zimmer’s music stand, dear readers, and embrace every opportunity. You never know which one is going to be your Rain Man.