welcome back, Beethoven

The last couple of days have been warm and muggy. The moisture in the air and the warmth of the sun have combined to produce some extreme cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds. Thunderstorms have been building up in the morning and unloading at night. It's miserable on the ground, but the view is fantastic: great white towers loom high above the desert like the hives of gigantic insects, or the airborne edifices of some futuristic civilization.

It may be hot and humid by day, but at night it (usually) cools down, and a sweet breeze blows through the house as lightning crackles over the dark mountains in the distance.

And here I sit, pajama-clad, a big glass of water by my side, fans on, listening to Beethoven's 5th Symphony, 4th movement. I actually prefer the fourth movement to the first. The first movement of Beethoven's 5th is the one everybody knows, allegro con brio—you know, duh-duh-duh-DUHHHHHH, duh-duh-duh-DUHHHHHH. It took me ages to find the fourth movement on YouTube because it's simply allegro, and search engines always assume you must be looking for the allegro con brio first movement.

The fourth movement isn't as dark or weighty as the first. It's quick, cheery, larger-than-life, full of pomp and bombast and triumph, reminiscent of Beethoven's 6th or Pastoral Symphony. I'd always been familiar with the first movement of Symphony No. 5, but I first heard the fourth movement when I was a kid, on a Beethoven tape (yes, an actual eight-track tape) that my folks had.

I was intoxicated. I saw visions, listening to it. I'd watched the original Star Wars trilogy not long before, and I saw, as I listened, Bespin and Cloud City and the sky-towers of far-flung planets. Clouds, light, air, and sun, the gleaming spires of fantastic cities...pure beauty put to music. Even at that young age I thought, "This couldn't have been written by the same man who wrote that gloomy Fifth Symphony" (this was before I knew the two works were from the same piece of music).

For years, the only place I could hear this beautiful composition was on that tape. I never forgot it. Even if it slipped my mind while I was away at school or overseas, I'd hear it again on occasion, thundering faintly at the edge of memory as I gazed over the wondrous sights of distant lands.

As the clouds built and climbed and towered and rolled over the Mojave yesterday evening, I remembered the fourth movement. I dug that old Beethoven tape out of the dresser drawer where it had lain for months, popped it into an aging tape player, and let it flow again. And man, wasn't it lovely. All those times I'd listened to it as a kid came flooding back. Just as I had all those years ago, I stared out of my window and let my mind fly. I watched the titanic cloud-castles, which hung in the skies above the desert exactly as they did above Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back. I soared over their sun-drenched expanse, orange and pink and purple and red and gold, leaping from powder puff to powder puff, kicking up a spray of vaporous foam, dodging the skyscrapers, the lighthouses, the lofty crags, the conning towers of ethereal battleships. The sky was a landscape in itself, a glorious chaos of color and shape and endless wonder, through which I hurtled to my heart's content, buoyed on waves of sound sprung from the mind of a long-dead genius.

To this day I cannot believe that Beethoven was deaf. Nobody could weave harmonies like that and not hear them played afterward. It would be the most monstrous injustice, like erasing the very clouds themselves from the evening sky.

Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Ludwig.

And the leap through the clouds, too.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to Rebel, I was informed of a rather neat blogfest taking place over at Dawn Embers, the Word Paint Blogfest, where the bloggers' job is to paint a scene with words. I guess that might be what I've done here. It's worth a shot, so I've entered. Thanks a million for the encouragement, Rebel. Eat your heart out, people.