if you sometimes like to pretend you’re in a movie … or in a book … then try this. sit in your car, preferably parked some distance from home, roll your windows down, and drive on winding back roads just as the sunset begins to fade to a periwinkle twilight. turn up some classical music (beethoven’s eroica, bach’s third suite for unaccompanied cello, debussy’s arabesque) for a sophisticated yet emotional soundtrack. let your hair blow across your face as you fly around corners and smile mysteriously to yourself when you stop alongside other cars whose drivers will hear the flutes and oboes skipping around in the stratosphere and the cellos singing out a glorious theme and will inevitably look at you with one eyebrow raised. perhaps even two.

as you start down the familiar road leading to your very own house, the music will crescendo slightly. somehow, you feel that something significant is taking place … some epic journey has been completed … some wrong in the world has been righted. which sets a quietly optimistic tone for the remainder of the evening.

whatever would the world be like without beethoven. i do not want to imagine.