Crank this up real loud at try not to smile. No matter what kind of music you like.

Written when there was no such thing as classical music. There was only field and forest, stream and mountain, and all the anguished conversations going on inside your head Herr Beethoven, in this your Ninth symphony, your last symphony.

Still standing as perhaps the most recognizable theme in all of western music, you created this majestic conversation by going up and down the musical scale. Not stopping where we expected you to stop. Leaving us anticipating an answer. And then delivering us to a glorious home as if you found us a path to where nature herself gently draws a breath.

I crank this up real loud and find it impossible not to smile.

The very first time that voices were used in a symphony by a major composer. Born from a time when all you could hear were the voices in your head.

Perhaps as we crank this up real loud and celebrate the fact that you turn 239 today; you are somewhere I don’t understand, somehow working on symphony #10. Perhaps you’ve encountered a man, wherever it is that the spirits of all the great artists go blend in holy harmony or even just have a beer together, perhaps you’ve encountered a man named Kurt Vonnegut. Smoking a cigarette, and writing away  with a dry and hooded eyed irony and humor that could capture the absolute horrors of the universe, brutality and pure evil that even goes beyond what he saw cleaning up the streets and crumbling buildings after the bombing of Dresden in the time he walked this imperfect earth. Perhaps you and Mr. Vonnegut have crossed paths. Perhaps he told you about the time he wrote:

“The only proof necessary for the existence of God, is music.”

And I wonder if when he wrote that, he was listening to you?

Happy 239th Birthday Herr Beethoven!