Daylight Savings Time

The whole world seems to change, almost instantaneously, when we move our clocks forward each April. The sense of change is heightened greatly by the fact that the time shift occurs when all of Nature begins to wake from its long winter hibernation. We bask in sunlight as life blossoms all around us. Spring is filled with magic and rejoicing.

Not for me. Not this year. For the first and only time in my life, the miracle of spring has filled me with deep, deep melancholy and longing. I suffer a yearning buried so deeply within me that every cell seems to ache. I literally cannot take a deep breath without suffering a catch in my throat. It is an orphan’s insatiable hunger swaddled in sorrow.

I cannot think of a single poem that captures this longing in words. Perhaps there are no words. Music seems to come closest to capturing the emotions. I find myself drawn to thoughts of mournful adagios. I find myself thinking about Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique.” I may even listen to it again someday.

I invite you to read about this symphony here.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the first three movements. I’ve listened to this symphony so many times, over so many years, that I can “hear” it in my mind. These three movements have always resonated within me, particularly the idée fixe that Berlioz employs to convey our hero’s longing for his beloved. The music expresses passion made manifest as yearning. I am most drawn to the 3rd movement the “Scene aux champs”…the shepherd’s lonely flute dying in the night.

I’ve always intensely disliked the 4th and 5th movements. The idée fixe becomes a taunt, a mockery…a death sentence. Although I’ve come to know (all too well, I’m afraid) the truths contained in the last two movements, I feel no urge to revisit those emotions. I prefer to limn my heartaches within the music of the first three movements.

Let the orchestra play on. Let our hero dream, hope, exult, yearn and slowly pine away. Let the solitary strains of the flute fade to silence. And, when all is over and done, let us remember that it is the love and joy that once filled our very marrow to bursting that serves as the root for the pain. If the heart is to be rooted in something - let it be love. The consequences are what they are.

One must have faith that there will come another spring...someday.

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