The Space Between
Some stories live quietly at the edges of memory—in the space between remembering and forgetting. Others are carried only by those who lived them, or by those who bore witness. But the great stories—the truly good ones—are held by all they touch: participant, witness, or even distant supporter alike.
This is one of those stories.
This is the story of CarolW.
This is, without a doubt, one of the most touching and heartwarming stories the handpan world has ever created. And as things go, it has been buried deep in the internet and forgotten. It was heavily documented in the heyday of Handpan.org, and it was because of that thriving online community that it even happened.
I found myself in the position of handpan ambassador—tip of the spear in what was one of the kindest gestures I’ve ever witnessed. It is the most beautiful story of community, care, and love that I’ve ever seen, and I was lucky to be part of it.
I first came to know CarolW on the Handpan.org forum around 2012. Among the scattered voices debating tunings and scales, there appeared a new voice. Different, deliberate, threaded with humor and too many emojis—even in a different font and color. She was in her mid-seventies, tucked away on the wild coast of British Columbia, far from any city, yet she dreamed of a handpan as if it were an old friend she had yet to meet.
As time passed, her presence on the forum left a mark. She became the most active member, surpassing even me. Her interest, desire, and passion were evident in every post. She longed—yearned—to play a handpan. To have her hands touch steel, to feel the weight of the metal in her lap. But due to her location and her stage of life, traveling to, or acquiring one, was out of the question.
The community took note. If we couldn’t get Carol to a handpan, could we get a handpan to Carol?
Our online community pooled money together, and I was selected to carry sound to her doorstep. While I wasn’t necessarily close, I was on the West Coast of North America and able to travel. They booked me a plane ticket, rented me a car, and off I went into the deep woods of British Columbia to find an old woman who couldn’t wait to officially join this international online community.
A few hours’ drive from Victoria, I found myself pulling into her driveway, early and unannounced. Below is a firsthand account from my travel journal:
A fragile lady eased her way down the driveway to greet me. Wearing outdoorsman overalls and Velcro shoes, she was not at all what I had pictured. I quickly laid expectations to rest and greeted her the best way I knew how: with a hug.
Her excitement was palpable. She held my hand and led me down to the gate to retrieve my car. Her baseball cap, at an accidental rakish tilt, covered her wispy grey hair. What she lacked in physical vigor she more than made up for in mental agility. Sharp as a tack and a student of logic—we hit it off immediately.
We made small talk, joked about the forum, and waited for her neighbors to arrive. Curious about the instrument that had brought me here, the neighbors insisted on seeing one.
With a glance from Carol, I grabbed a handpan. She had waited so long, been so patient, and trusted a group of complete strangers from the internet to help her dream come true. I wanted this to be her moment.
And it was—I knew because of the tears. Tears of joy, grief, hardship, loneliness, love, and happiness all poured out at once. Her soul had been hooked, and she knew it.
As the days of my visit unfolded, so did Carol’s story—and her struggles with the local community.
Several years earlier, Carol had been evicted from her house through a tangle of paperwork and a poor lawyer. She was pushed from place to place—first to a small trailer, then out again when the landlord reclaimed it. With each move, more of her belongings disappeared, until only a single box of photos and a handful of documents survived, saved by a friend. Out of those scraps, her story could be pieced together.
Carol was born in 1936, into a lineage steeped in intellect and public life. Her father, a brilliant mathematician, walked the halls of Yale alongside Einstein and later won the Wolf Prize in the early 1980s for his groundbreaking work in topology and singularity. Behind him stood generations of distinction—her grandfather a senator, her great-grandfather a Supreme Court justice, and further back still, a direct tie to the founding fathers. Whitney, her ancestor, was the only one to sign all four founding documents of the United States.
Yet for Carol, this heritage was less a mantle than a backdrop. What truly shaped her was music. She studied at Wesleyan on the East Coast, earning a doctorate in ethnomusicology at a time when women were scarcely present in the field. Her ears opened to the rhythms of the world—Middle Eastern percussion, the ragas of India, the cries of flamenco guitar. In Spain she lived among Gypsy musicians for more than a year, taken under their wing, who begged her not to leave.
But at some point, music slipped away from her life. The tears she shed when I first played for her told me the absence had been long and heavy. Those tears came not only from the sound of steel, but from the memory of all the music she had once carried within her.
I left the following day—leaving Carol where I had found her, but not how I had found her. She was profoundly changed by the visit.
As I wove my way back to the airport, and back to my life, I felt grateful for the opportunity to represent an entire international community and to have their support as we uplifted our oldest member. I imagined that would be the one and only time I’d see our dear CarolW, so I savored the moment.
Before I left, one of Carol’s neighbors made a passing comment—that my visit might have just added another decade to her life. Little did they know how right they were.
I couldn’t have known it then, but Carol’s story was not finished; it was only gathering momentum.
A year later, I found myself once again on a plane to British Columbia—this time not as a community ambassador, but as a mule. More precisely, a handpan mule.
As predicted, my first visit with Carol had only fueled her fire. Her fervor on the forum had grown feverish; her excitement all but leapt off the screen.
At the time, a private corner of the forum existed, reserved for admins and elders—a quiet space to discuss the workings of the site itself. In that space, a new thread appeared: not what to do about CarolW, but what we might do for CarolW.
An idea surfaced that bordered on the absurd: could we find a handpan for Carol—her very own?
It was absurd because, at that moment, acquiring a quality handpan was nearly impossible. Demand so far exceeded supply that even seasoned players could wait years. But—but—within that private circle were deep enthusiasts who, when their influence was pooled together, held just enough sway to make the impossible…possible.
One veteran member of the community offered their newly received handpan to Carol, trusting they could return to the maker in time for a replacement. What made this gesture all the more remarkable was the instrument itself—unanimously regarded by every player who touched it as the finest example of a handpan ever produced.
The instrument had been born in western Russia. From there it made its way to North Carolina, with a pause in Helsinki. It then traveled on to Philadelphia for a pit stop.
At each stop it rested with a trusted community member—out of necessity, yes, but also as an opportunity for them to become part of the story. Charged with love, and no small measure of envy, the instrument finally boarded a plane and landed in my lap.
By this point, Carol knew of the gift she was to receive. The forum had been informed and was complicit in the gesture. Funds were once again raised, a digital hat was passed around the corners of the globe. Carol however, did not know when it would arrive—or that it was I who would deliver it.
From there, the story nearly repeats itself: a ticket booked, a car rented, and the long road unfurled toward the rugged coast of Vancouver Island.
When she opened the door, she was stunned. Stunned to the point that, for a moment, I thought we had lost dear Carol to old age—shocked to the extent that I feared I might have killed her.
But once she found her breath and her wits, it was I who was warmly greeted this time with a hug.
It is with great pleasure that I can report the delivery was a resounding success. Carol just about keeled over and died from shock when I arrived at her front door. Beautifully orchestrated by her neighbors, we spent Friday afternoon laughing, smiling, and playing music—just as it should be.
I again left Carol, this time knowing how profoundly charged she had been left. Not only by the instrument that now sat in her lap, but by the undeniable impact this community had once again made on our sweet CarolW.
If the story ended here, it would be a great story. One of community and generosity. It was however, far from over.
My third visit to Carol was of my own devising. Two years had passed since that first journey, but this time I came not as an ambassador, nor as a mule, but as a tuner.
In the years since meeting her, I had picked up the hammer, learned the craft of tuning, and begun crafting instruments of my own.
Victoria, BC, had once been a hotbed for handpans. In the mid-2000s, hundreds of instruments from PANArt were imported and distributed there, planting the seeds of a small, close-knit community of players. A decade later, those instruments were all long overdue for tuning—and I had become their closest tuner.
This time, I booked the trip myself, rented the car, and made sure to leave space to visit Carol.
To my surprise, I was welcomed not only by Carol but also by a handful of local handpan players. What I thought would be a quiet visit unfolded into a night of music and camaraderie.
We played, noodled, and geeked out together while Carol sat beaming, in the middle of it all. Music—long absent—had returned at last. It filled her home, her heart, and her soul.
Special for me, I had brought along an instrument of my own making—my very first—for Carol to play. Across the years we had walked different paths, but both of us had allowed our love for the artform to deepen and take shape.
To see her hands explore the steel I had hammered, sculpted into sound, was to feel our friendship deepen as well—a shared reverence for the mysterious power these instruments possess.
I left that evening with no plans to return, yet with a quiet confidence that this would not be the last time I saw my friend Carol.
While Carol couldn’t travel, that never stopped her from finding ways to be present at gatherings around the world. A few days before I was set to cross the U.S. for a handpan festival, I found this request waiting in my inbox:
I just had a crazy idea. I'm attaching a larger version of my spider-avatar from the handpan.org forum.
If it's EASY for you to print a copy of this thing, maybe you could pull a joke and tie it to something, or have it fall out of one of your pans, or something.
It would make me feel good to be with you again, even if in such an oddball way!
Hope you have an absolute blast; I'll be thinking of you!
If you knew, you knew. Those who spotted the little paper spider taped in the corner of the event space were delighted. I never claimed it was me—but from that point on, I made sure CarolW attended festivals with me all over the world. She always had the best seat in the house, a spider’s-eye view.
And while she couldn’t travel far, Carol did begin to venture out with her handpan in her own community. She became a regular at a local open mic, a familiar figure in town. Music had given her a new way to connect—not only online, but in person.
We kept in touch, sharing updates on life’s milestones. Years passed before I saw Carol again. The last time I saw her was by chance: she had fallen, and was in the hospital.
I hadn’t planned to see her. No ticket booked, no visit on my radar. I was in British Columbia for personal reasons, not on business—and I hadn’t even brought a handpan. I was on the far side of Vancouver Island, visiting a friend in need. No one knew I was there. I hadn’t alerted the local community, nor Carol. I hadn’t even packed a tuning hammer.
By chance, on the very day I arrived, Carol tripped in a parking lot and broke her hip. She was taken first to a local clinic, then transported to a central hospital—one that happened to lie much closer to my path.
A message from her neighbor—via the Carol-Alert-System—reached me with the news and her location. I had the time, so I took the detour.
I arrived, unannounced, the next day. Though heavily medicated, Carol’s surprise was no less animated. And to my astonishment, there in the room with her was her most prized possession: her handpan.
Our usual banter and geekery were not on the menu. But Carol had given me another way to communicate—music.
As she drifted in and out of sleep, I played. I let our mutual love for this instrument, this artform, this community, flow through me. Each note was a reminder of how much love our little world held for her. Each melody, proof that she belonged.
I watched as my time slowly ran out. When I struck the final chord, Carol was fast asleep. I tucked her handpan back into its case, tucked her into her bed, kissed her forehead, and said goodbye.
This time, I knew it would be the last.
On August 15th, 2020, I posted the following:
With great sadness, we say goodbye to our friend, Carol Whitney. Known as CarolW on Handpan.org, She had more posts than any other member—by over a thousand.
To those who supported that first trip and meeting, I thank you; it was the golden age of Handpan.org. I remember one of her neighbors once saying that her indoctrination into the world of handpans was probably going to add another decade to her life. Seems she was just about right.
There are two tragedies in this story, neither of which is Carol’s passing.
The first is personal. I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye properly, to process my grief, and celebrate her alongside the community she loved. COVID-related travel restrictions kept me from attending her service. It was held, lovingly, by her neighbors in the same local hall where we had performed together on my first visit.
For years after, I flew a flag above my workshop door: blue, with a black spider and a bright red abdomen. It flapped happily in the wind, sometimes tangling on itself, a small show of defiance.
I recorded a video for the service—a modest offering of love for Carol. Her flag danced in the wind while I played a melody she would have cherished. Listen closely and you can hear my daughters in the background—the same daughters Carol always asked about, the ones she sent warm wishes to on their birthdays.
The flag was more than an invitation; it was an invocation. I wanted Carol to live on, to have a presence just as she had at festivals around the world. I know she would have been tickled pink to see herself flying above my shop, catching the wind, greeting visitors, and always within earshot of the music she loved.
Each time someone asked about the flag, it was an invitation to tell her story—a chance to share the memory of an amazing friend. And with every telling, I found myself processing my grief not through tears, but through celebration of a truly unique soul.
The second tragedy is larger: Carol’s story—and her thousands of posts—were eventually lost when Handpan.org went dark. Those who were there, remember. Those who helped her step into our beloved artform will never forget.
And so, maybe this story, the one I write here, is for those who missed those years—when our little corner of the internet was graced by a voice entirely her own.
Eight years.
Not quite a decade, but close enough.
In the end, Carol’s story is not just about a woman and her handpan. It is about how memory outlives the fragile vessels that carry it. The forum where her voice once rang has long since fallen silent, overtaken by social media. Her thousands of posts now drift like ashes in the digital wind.
And yet here I am, telling her story, one last time.
Carol taught us that presence is not limited to the body. She was there in every spider taped to a wall. Her name drifted through conversations and laughter at festivals around the world. Her humor rippled in the flag that caught the wind above my workshop. Even now, she is here—in the pauses between these words, in the echo of life’s fading melody.
Most of all, Carol reminded me what music can do. It can knit community from strangers. It can call someone back to life after years of silence. It can give us a way to say what cannot otherwise be said.
Her time with the handpan was brief—just a tenth of her life—but in those years she reminded us of something we are always at risk of forgetting: that music, at its heart, is not about virtuosity or performance, but about belonging. Not about the instrument, but about the people it gathers.
Some stories fade quietly at the edges of memory. Carol’s will not.
I still leave a little space for her when I play. She lives on—not in the notes, but in the space between.
Goodbye, Carol. Thank you for being my friend.
