Candy has been a delectably fertile creative ground here, where flights of fancy are seeded, where sugar-spun fantasies are wound like shiny clouds surrounding a towering croquembouche. Candy has been poison here too, insidiously insinuating itself in deceptively innocent fashion – as if it wasn’t going to rot your stomach, rot your teeth, and rot your soul with its deadly sweetness. Candy has been a girl in love, a girl above it all, a girl unaware of being the prettiest one in the room. Candy, now, is telling the story of this song…

Candy says, “I’ve come to hate my body

And all that it requires in this world.”

Candy says, “I’d like to know completely

What all they discretely talk about.”

Candy is seduction and promise – pure titillation and pure honey hope – the fabled, the fabulous, the albatross of fame flung so casually around the neck like some string of pearls – and Coco Chanel whispering always to take off the last thing you put on before leaving the house.

I’m gonna watch the blue birds fly over my shoulder

I’m gonna watch them pass me by

Maybe when I’m older

What do you think I’ll see

If I could walk away from me?

Candy on a necklace, candy on a toss, candy on a bracelet, candy on a cross, candy on a kick, candy on a cock, candy on a prick, candy on a frock… candy as a reminder that rhymes don’t always lead to reason, that madness can sometimes be sweet, and temptation, when handled delicately, can be dangerous and divine.

Candy says, “I hate the quiet places

That cause the smallest taste of what will be.”

Candy says, “I hate the big decisions

That cause endless revisions in my mind.”

Candy caught in the crosshairs of vulnerability, deciding how much is safe to reveal, deciding what is best kept concealed, and struggling to relax into being desired. She wanted it before untangling its problematic roots and shoots – sugar forged into glass – shattered and splintered into shards and razors and the possibility of pain and destruction – the slow bleeding out from a cut too fine to be felt or found.

I’m gonna watch the blue birds fly over my shoulder

I’m gonna watch them pass me by

Maybe when I’m older…

Candy coming on strong, oozing syrup and goo and sweetness – Candy coming on weak, tripping over her own trepidation – Candy coming on incorruptible in the pure innocence of original sin. Candy wanting only to be held, Candy wanting to be protected from the rain, Candy wanting only to be cared for – Candy always wishing and hoping and praying for something to be different, something to be whole.

What do you think I’d see if I could walk away from me?

This crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis) has not flowered in years, but I don’t grow it for decorative purposes – it is to keep away the critters who might eat up the single crocus we have left, with its powerfully-pungent odor. For just long enough until the crocus foliage can ripen and start dying back, giving food for next year’s bloom.

Who loves the sun?
Who cares that it makes plants grow?
Who cares what it does
Since you broke my heart?

Who loves the wind?
Who cares that it makes breezes?
Who cares what it does
Since you broke my heart?

This song by the Velvet Underground sounds more like summer than spring, but we need summer more than spring right now because winter is still creeping into the nights and mornings. Ephemerals are coming up even in the most frightful weather – the enchanting and all-too-fleeting hardy flowers whose delicate appearance is at odds with how tough they need to be this early in the growing season.

Who loves the sun?
Who loves the sun?
Not everyone
Who loves the sun?

Who loves the rain?
Who cares that it makes flowers?
Who cares that it makes showers
Since you broke my heart?

Spring is made for the contradictions – the tender with the tough, the rustic with the refined – and throughout it all the battle of sun and rain, the celebration of flowers and showers. What will the next day bring? No one can know…

Who loves the sun?
Who cares that it is shining?
Who cares what it does
Since you broke my heart?
Who loves the sun?
Who loves the sun?
Not everyone
Who loves the sun?
Sun
Sun
Sun

Shades of pink and lilac swirl in layers of tulle and lace, the sheer refinery playing beautiful tricks on the eyes. A cloud of color billows about and behind – maybe it’s the dress, maybe it’s the perfume, maybe it’s the illusion of pink. A portal to the past reveals itself in every bubble – it’s the bubble of self-awareness, the bubble of knowledge, the bubble of realizing that maybe you’ve been wrong.

There’s that beautiful girl with a beautiful life
Such a beautiful life built on lies

‘Cause all that’s required to live in a dream
Is endlessly closing your eyes

She spins such beautiful stories to sing her to sleep
Full of magic and glory and love
She’s the girl in the bubble, the bright shiny bubble
Blissfully floating above

Ah, but the truth has a way of seeping on in
Beneath the surface and sheen
And blind as you try to be
Eventually, it’s hard to unsee what you’ve seen

Galinda’s transformation in the ‘Wicked’ movies is shrouded outwardly in pink fabulosity, shimmering with ethereal beauty and sparkling wands, but doesn’t fully take hold until she dons a black cape, muddy boots, and rides out in the night to help her friend. By then it’s too late, and sometimes life is about accepting the way that your choices have played out, making the best of circumstances that were never quite what you wanted or expected. It’s never too late to change, to become something better than you are today, even if nothing else changes. You can be different. You can be better.

And so that beautiful girl
With a beautiful life
Has a question that haunts her som?how
If she comes down from the sky
Giv?s the real world a try
Who in the world is she now?

Does it feel a little frivolous in a world on the seeming edge of nuclear war? Perhaps, but think of the burnt bagel theory: if the worst thing in your day is that your bagel was a little burned, that can feel catastrophic. Not saying it’s right, just saying that comparison works in myriad ways. Usually it’s the thief of joy; sometimes it can be helpful. We want so badly to make sense and order of the world, especially when it makes us feel yucky, or we feel like we have failed. Revelations and transformations are difficult, especially when they start to change lifelong archetypes and beliefs.

And though so much of her wishes that she could float on
And the beautiful lies never stop
For the girl in the bubble, the pink shiny bubble
It’s time for her bubble to pop

For the popular girl, high in the bubble
Isn’t it high time for her bubble to pop?

Music lends itself to spring moments, and this song touches on beauty, one of the themes of this lilac season. Here is our growing, and increasingly eclectic, playlist:

• Lilac Wine

• Symphony for a Queen

• I’m Beautiful

• Beautiful Life

• Get Happy

• 24hr Dog

• Love Song

• Showgirl at Heart

• Glued

• Lilac

• How Beautiful the Days

• Lilacs in the Rain

This was supposed to be the morning post, but the music and the sentiments were too moody to stand up to the morning light. Certain music must be heard only when the sun has gone to bed, the way certain flowers only emit their perfume late into the evening like an angel’s trumpet. Perhaps they’re afraid of the cold, brisk, bracing frost that still troubles the mornings. Lilacs are hardier than that, forged before the winter even begins to wreak its havoc. Spring blooms have to be stronger than those of summer.

I see lilacs in the rain,

And you are with me again,

When April sprinkles her dreams in my heart

When we parted in the lane,

The skies were tearful with rain,

The scent of lilacs remained in my heart.

Andy mentioned the angel’s trumpet in passing a little while ago, and maybe this is the year we bring them back – the first year is really just the planning – their show usually happens after overwintering for a year or two, when they can develop roots and trunks and soar like small trees, dangling their sweetly-lemon-scented blooms in the nights of summer.

Two other arms around you now,

Some other love has found you now!

But when love forgets to smile,

My darling, once in a while,

Remember April and lilacs in the rain!

For now, the lilacs will have to do, and they stand on their own perfume-wise. I’ve been afraid to examine our lilac trees to see how many buds might be present – there’s nothing other to be done whether they are full or scant, and lately I’ve been focusing on what is real, what is present, what is at hand – a method of mindfulness that fills the head-space when overthinking runs the risk of overtaking.

The previous sentence dangles there without a proper ending. It began in such busy fashion and then just petered out. Playing with words is merely an excuse for disguising something deeper, something more vulnerable and telling. Lilacs evoke such sentiments – they have me spilling secrets of the heart’s desires, and the heart’s hurts. That’s why this post would have never stood up to the unforgiving light of day; there wouldn’t be enough shadow to shield…

When we parted in the lane,

The skies were tearful with rain,

The scent of lilacs remained in my heart.

A record of a lesser-known musical titled ‘The Most Happy Fella’ by Frank Loesser peeked out at me from a bin at a downtown Albany thrift store. A lovely-enough introduction to an operatic excursion, the few song excerpts I found online illuminated why it never made much of a lasting splash, but there is beauty in this song, and the atmosphere provided by the Percy Faith treatment fits in well with this beautiful lilac spring we’ve conjured to gain some traction out of this recent hazy winter.

Without words, the music creates atmosphere over distinctive scenes or plot points – evoking a feeling, a sense of something, a hint of emotion – and the rest you can fill in from your own earned experience. What does it sound like? Where does it place you? It is possible to believe you’ve had an experience just by hearing certain songs, even if you’ve never quite had it. Music does that, even in the most trifling song, if you let it, if you give it the space to live.

Spring begins its song softly, rising from the winter, not so much a phoenix as a brand new bird never before seen. It’s a different experience sometimes, as if happening for the very first time.