Hymne au Soleil

I was thinking about Lili Boulanger’s Hymne au Soleil today.  So filled with the glory of the dawn, of magical childhood, of new beginnings.  So renewing—for good or for ill, it could only have been written by someone in the flower of youth.  I think of Mozart’s words to Harry in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf:

Wenn sie auch noch allerlei sehr Menschliches in sich hat, man spürt doch schon das Jenseits heraus, das Lachen—nicht?  (Even if there are all sorts of very human things in it, you can feel the other world, too, the laughter—no?)

The human and the divine, nature and grace—and the laughter, the joy.

Like Novalis and Philipp Otto Runge, Lili Boulanger was barely out of adolescence when she died, but she left us a whole universe of light.

Los Angeles

The Sonoran Desert from the base of the Little Harquahala Mountains.

This week, I rode along through deserts and cities with our younger child, who is moving to Los Angeles to go to graduate film school at USC.  I'm happy that he will have the experience of L.A., arguably the craziest city on earth, but also one of the most magical.  Despite the traffic, the litter, and the smog (which is a lot better now than when I was a youngster), the city has always felt like home.  What I wouldn't give to return there permanently!