I don’t know what the singers are saying as they jockey the German around, I just get lost in the sound.

They stand heroically, and sway with joyful importance as the swirling strings soar and tympani roll and bassoons pump away.

And I’m not sure it matters that I don’t understand the words.

There is no single way to describe love because if we did we’d stop trying; no absolute way to express joy.

It is what fills us.

And hollows us out in its absence.

It is loss we define precisely, measured to the minute; how it weighs down the spirit, hides within the justifications and how we walked away, yet left wondering.

It is an answerless thing, both ponderous and weightless, contradictions contained, each taking and giving, and in between that space, we live.

Rise.

We stand with feet anchored in muddy boots and heads drifting in aerial clouds, wanting both to be anchored and dreaming.

Rise.

Release and rise.