I can't remember if I've mused on these words before, or if I'm merely so used to thinkg of them with the return each year of good weather. Thomas Mann used them to express how artists feel in springtime. Flowers and sunshine are lovely, but they distract, and make it challenging to create art that surpasses their beauty. To create real beauty, the artist must have cold, darkness, and heartbreak to react to, to have an urgent need for beauty instead of beauté accompli.
I say 'damn spring' for other reasons, however. (And I will leave you to decide which is more beautiful, the English version or the orginial German: verdammte Frühling, which has its own melody.) This season surrounds me with beauty that causes more and more severe allergies each year. Spring distracts me from its own beauty, and everything else I wish to appreciate. Even though I now have the time to pursue my leisure and ambition projects (writing! gardening! music-making!) that had to be pushed aside during peak work-season (music-making! freelancing! gigs I'm never going to do again!), I'm too trapped in my own histamines to take action. It's a very confusing time: pain and pleasure rolled into one.
This particular spring is especially confusing, but for different reasons. You see, I have something I want to tell you. But it's none of your business. I'm bursting with happiness. I'm trying to tone it down. It's the most unique, transformational thing in the world. It happens every single day, and most of us can expect to experience it. It's extremely private. It's public knowledge.
I could tell you the story here. I could even remember some of the words we spoke or how I cried, and it's a lovely story. But words have their limits. This is why artists give up when they try to capture springtime, or love. So I won't try very hard here. I'll just say that for one moment, after dark and with snow on the ground, there was a new universe, with otherworldly light and warmth but only two inhabitants, who were content to gaze wordlessly at each other for hours, the way you would gaze at your newborn child.
I'll leave you with one more word: Yes.
