Crucial Track for March 7, 2026

"Spring 1 - 2022" by Max Richter

I know what it feels like to lose hope, because that's what happened to me during the COVID-19 pandemic. I saw the worst of us on display and my outlook was grim. What the hell is the matter with people? Why would you refuse a vaccine that could prevent your own death? Why would you refuse to wear a face mask that could prevent someone else's death? You know, I managed an employee at the time who, upon our much too early return to the office, actually bragged about how he refused to wear a mask anywhere. He caught COVID twice during the time I managed him, and he milked every hour of the additional paid time off granted to employees who had it. And then there was the murder of George Floyd, and the scrap of meat Congress threw to us in the form of a Juneteenth federal holiday. There were the nut jobs in red hats all huffy puffy mad about not being able to get their haircuts and their toilet tissue. I was emotionally, mentally, and physically unwell, and would be for years.

I experienced few moments of connectedness, and almost all of them involved music.

This piece was the most impactful. I don't remember how I came across it, but I saw a video of Vivaldi's Four Seasons "recomposed" by a contemporary composer called Max Richter. I never listened to Vivaldi or his Four Seasons, so wouldn't know it in its original form. But its original form doesn't matter to me. This piece does. This piece fucking reached inside my chest and drew out pain, like a surgeon suctioning out bad blood with precision, competence, and care.

It's the perfect encapsulation of Spring.

Do you hear the birds? They are the small chicks in tall tree nests. They're crying to be fed and nourished, their incubations over. Their new eyes and beaks and wings touched by new air, guarded by mother-birds, their own songs, centuries old calls and trills handed down to these young cloud creatures. They are heard.

Do you hear the aching? It is the unexamined soul's search for newness and clarity, and the beginnings of receiving both. It is the feeling of a burdening that was there for so long it wasn't distinct anymore. The kind of burden carried both inside and out; a heels-dug-in feeling of un-feeling. But now this aching soul stretches so hard it can almost reach what it needs. It's so close - right there on this Spring day, on this Spring morning. Bird songs and sun brushing away collective burdens like fog. It is heard.

Do you hear the wanting? It is the world on its axis, a twirling toy in an entirely incomprehensible place. One thing wanting every thing, and everything wanting the world so much it makes momentum. A want out of winter, a want of waking up time. We share it all - this want, this raw and desperate reaching, claiming and re-claiming light and life and birth and hope. It's an un-delicate rousing and exploding - colors coming out of the soil, shaking off the first layer of snowmelt watered, brown crust. Little harbingers of hope, in a world on its axis where tall trees grow and birds sing and burdens begin to unburden if we let them. If we do the work. It, too, is heard.

All of this is in this song. Every beginning that ever was or will be is in this song. It sets the stage for every player. It is the start of every story.

And also I just really, really like it.