I love the sound of German in a way that is baffling for me, and, I would guess, all the more so for you.

When people express their disgust at German, “that butchery of a language that ruthlessly tracks, slaughters and hacks to pieces the most atrocious sounds”, I just shake my head, a mixed feeling of aggravation and pity, sorry for what they’re missing out on.

Pure bliss is right under their nose, and they have to turn it up.

While my companions remain unreceptive to German’s helpless calls of love and for love, I find myself revelling in every syllable that vibrates my eardrums, beating the sweetest rhythm, one so delicate that memories never manage to seize it quite. And so, when I least expect it, the beauty hits me straight in the face, over and over again, pummelling. What an exquisite concoction of sounds German is. Curious gymnastics that yields the most exotic, precious results. Successions of sounds only the divine could have thought up. One sweet, ravaging syllable after the next. On and on again.

More and more often, I find myself deriving immense pleasure from listening to German – through female voices in particular. I used not to find anything special about the language; it was only a model like any other that you had to imitate. But then, somehow, I started finding beauty in it. I was about to write that I didn’t have the slightest idea why this shift had occurred in my mind, but now I suspect I might have found the source… for it is quite difficult to overlook a subject I’ve written thousands of words about, and, at that, one that keeps coming back into my life to touch and inspire me in the most diverse circumstances. I’m talking about the band Broadcast. Besides all the personal memories associated with the track Minim, it is probably the first song that gave me a glimpse of the heaven that is German language. Such urges of affection had probably occurred to me several times before, but only then did that beauty appear to me so clearly, so categorically. Like a ripple that would spread to reveal extensive beauty, enlivening the otherwise level and bland surface, that one heavenly “sch” sound in “Menschen” gave way to a myriad of other epiphanies, culminating in the state I am in now, marvelling at the blessing German is and convincing myself that wilfully tweaking my brain to see the world through rose-coloured glasses can do no harm.

An imaginary friend that gets you through life is worth keeping.

(I also like Berlin.)