Aristotle in Spring (IMS Sidequest)

Episode 82-Aristotle in Spring (IMS Sidequest)
Political animals and dramatic blossoms
This episode aired September 23, 2025
https://www.shannonheatonmusic.com/episode-82-aristotle-in-spring-ims-sidequest

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[ Music: “Free the Heel,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

I’m Shannon Heaton, flute player and host of Irish Music Stories, the show about traditional music. And the bigger stories behind it.

This is an IMS Sidequest in which I map the music from my Perfect Maze album, and share a few jottings about tragic heroes and honeybees, and monarch butterflies and kings.

Writing about current and ancient events and pollinators was my way of taking in upsetting and distracting news.

[ Music: “Pick and Drive,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

Like, when I’d hear about political or social trends that seemed just desperate, I’d read a few details. Then I’d funnel what I’d learned into a story about a somewhat related subject. Often I’d be connecting to something older. Or something from the natural world.

And I moved through a tangle of topics. And I was the one designing the tangle.

Ultimately the short stories ended up leading me back to my musical maze. The music on Perfect Maze is inspired by the bees and butterflies. And by the flute, and string, and piano players who benefit from the plants that they support. Because of course, no pollinators, no plants and trees. No food. And no wood flutes.

[ Music: “Sweetest Blooms of Early Spring” (intro) from Perfect Maze

Composer: Shannon Heaton

Artists: Shannon Heaton & Friends ]

I play a blackwood flute made by Patrick Olwell. You can meet Pat in Irish Music Stories episode 78. 

Usually I play traditional dance tunes—short, 8-bar melodies in different time signatures. It’s the tunes themselves—things that I’ve learned from other people directly; and also the rhythmic style with which I play the tunes that makes them ‘Irish’ for me.

So it’s jigs like The Rose in the Heather [plays first 8 bars]

Or reels like The Traveller [plays first 8 bars]

I use ornamentation to articulate the rhythms. I use specific air pulsing patterns to move rhythmically through the tunes. These are dance tunes, and they follow a lot of rules. So even the newly composed ‘traditional-style’ tunes follow these conventions.

I’ve also written music that’s fully arranged and notated, and works for players who don’t use that same approach. Like the beginning of my Sweetest Blooms Suite.

When I play it, I’m still using some of my Irish stylistic elements. But I really designed this to work for classical flutes and strings as well. It’s got a chamber music vibe with different textures, some pizzicato, some dynamic shits, and some soaring flute moments.

The beehive is constructed with seven successive white squares and five successive black squares. A perfect maze. This was one of the creative prompts that inspired the whole collection.

I recorded this bit a few years ago. And I had one more live studio session planned for mid March 2020. But instead, we all moved into virtual events. So much for my Perfect Maze.

[ Music: “E Chimes,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

The project sat in a folder on my old laptop. And then on an external hard drive when that computer died. Which gathered dust along with the stacks of sheet music, with all my pencil scratching revisions.

By 2023 I assumed my Perfect Maze was dead. And as another U.S. presidential election ramped up with campaign promises to kill the Environmental Protection Agency, I feared that many of the pollinators that inspired the music would also end up dead.

[ Music: “Aristotle’s Air,” from

Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt & Shannon Heaton ]

I started reading about Aristotle. He called humans political animals. And he thought that, like bees, humans survive and thrive when we set up systems and coordinate for a common purpose. I imagined him sitting by the Néstos River, watching bees search for food. And I wrote about Aristotle in Early Spring:

In the 4th Century BCE, Aristotle watched worker bees forage and take advantage of pear and almond tree blossoms, creeping thyme, Syrian-grass, myrtle, and poppies. Younger bees would have been back in the hive nursing larvae, cleaning cells, building wax combs, and making honey, while male drones mated with the queen, who was busy laying eggs.

Every bee working for the good of the colony.

Butterflies would have also flitted around in the Spring in Ancient Greece, emerging from hibernation, looking for places to land. Most people believed that these blooms and beautiful creatures were a show of joy from Demeter, to celebrate the annual return of her daughter Persephone from the Underworld.

Aristotle compared butterflies to human souls, with their capacity for metamorphosis and order. And to help political animals evolve and find consonant order, Aristotle preferred a representative system of government. He thought individual citizens voting for every single thing would lead to voters weighing in on things they don’t understand. He worried about ignorant voters. Better to have representatives mediating between different groups and keeping power balanced. Better to have wise, virtuous people casting votes for the good of the hive. Public servants, working for the collective. Public, not private welfare. Democracy, not oligarchy (which Aristotle defined as men in power who have property).

The bees and butterflies were important features of early Spring. So was the annual Spring festival at Dionysus.

Pollinators are still key players of early Spring. And some of the most dynamic actors these days are politicians.

In the Spring of 2024, one of the rising stars of the U.S. presidential election play delivered lines about propping up his richest friends! He’d reward billionaires, he said. He’d cut services and programs for people—and pollinators.

Aristotle said no one would willingly vote for a system “with a view to its own advantage… not to that of its subjects.” No free man, he said, “if he can escape from it, will endure such a government.” Yet this actor was killing it with many American working class and poor people, even as he vowed to dismantle basic social services. And even as he boasted about his own riches.

When he wasn’t flapping around the country, when he was stuck in courtrooms for felony and rape trials, he showed disdain and disregard for the justice system. He issued threats. He hurled insults at his critics. No remorse. No metamorphosis.

In the theatre of Aristotle’s day, the very best Greek heroes eventually fell. They sinned, manipulated, and clawed at power and wealth. And audiences would watch while a chorus helped interpret inevitable downfalls. When protagonists learned and repented, the crowds would cheer. They’d consume a parade of transformation (and fermented grapes, pollinated by the bees and butterflies). And as their tragic heroes fell and showed remorse, the public judges and jurors would sympathize and find emotional release together.

2300 years ago, these plays helped people gain communal insights. They helped make sense of the human and the divine world, with all its violence, loss, and mystery. With the help of the cross-examining chorus, people had agency in the outcomes. They could render judgment: they could offer pity and prayers for the remorseful; or rotten tomatoes for the smug.

Aristotle might have given low marks for a show with characters who don’t face meaningful downfalls, and who don’t glean any insights about destiny or the will of the gods.

Without concern for “appropriate and pleasurable language… or incidents arousing pity and fear,” there’s no catharsis.

While I digested political news and learned about Greek tragedies, the snowdrops and daffodils were emerging in Medford, Massachusetts. The forsythia was starting to scream. The bees and butterflies were working away.

And I turned away from the Aristotle essay and went back to the Sweetest Blooms Suite. To bear witness to the melt of winter. To remember that things are cyclical. To welcome the return of Spring, and the profusion of pollinators working for the good of the hive.

The sweetest blooms of early spring

Leap forth with all the hope they bring.

From winter’s dead wood creeps the vine

To leave the darkest days behind.

Thank you for listening. Hope you’ll tune in next time, for stories about a blue dress, a blue wall, and a primate research facility in South Carolina.

Find the Irish Music Stories podcast (and subsidiary sidequests), and order CDs and sheet music for the Sweetest Blooms Suite and the other music on the Perfect Maze album, at shannonheatonmusic.com.