Welcome back, Fred!

Well, if you have a gift, flaunt it! That's what I always say (actually, that's not true... I say lots of other things, too, like: "Yes, I would like another chocolate chip cookie. Thank you!")

Anyway, just an update.

I've decided not to use metaphor for "Song" at all -- just to describe song's qualities: Brief and intangible, leaving no evidence behind after it is gone -- unlike a plough, which leaves a furrow, or a sword, which leaves spilt blood, or a hammer, which leaves a pounded nail -- but being stronger than all those things because of how it affects the mind and heart.

Then to describe "Love" in a similiar way: that it seems inseperable from the youth and innocence in which it begins. And since youth and innocence must pass, we fear that love will pass, too. But that it's only the heady intoxication of romance that passes, while the real love goes much deeper, and just as a song is stronger than a plough, sword and hammer, love is stronger than all of life's troubles.

I am contemplating using an analogy to the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper for the first part, at least a version I vaguely remembered from years ago ... a discussion of which is here: Alt. version of Ant and Grasshopper tale (the argument that songs are weak being supported by the fable, countered with: "but the ants were supported in their labor by the song of the grasshopper"). Maybe. But that might be getting too complicated again...