"When you are old and gray and full of sleep"

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

~ by William Butler Yeats, for Maud Gonne; written more than a hundred years ago. He believed that these lines would survive her youth, his age, their century. They have.

They will survive ours, too.

A Last Reading, by Adrian Johnston

"Playing Love"

"The Legend of 1900" is perhaps one of the best films no one has seen, as someone once wrote. I knew of it years ago only because I was a rabid fan of anything Giuseppe Tornatore directed, so I kept track of his work (his more famous films include "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso" and "Malena"). When I learned that he was making his first English-language film, to be titled "La Leggenda del Pianista sull'Oceano," I waited for it to open in Singapore. It never did, but they did release it in VCD format, which I bought.

His music collaborator was, of course, Ennio Morricone, who wrote the scores for his earlier films and has written some of the most beautiful music in film history. Music matters in this movie, because the plot revolves around a piano player who has spent his entire life aboard a ship. Very poetically, his world is all the ocean and the span of his piano's keyboard. The soundtrack is wonderful, but one piece stands out for me, because its meaning is derived from the scene over which it plays.

1900 (the protagonist is named for the year he was born in) is reluctantly making a recording aboard the ship, but as he plays, he catches sight of a young woman outside in the morning light, using the porthole as a mirror while she wipes the sleep from her eyes. There isn't a whit of self-consciousness about her; she doesn't see him, after all, and in her innocence, she now directs his fingers upon the piano. And how he watches her, and studies her, panicking slightly when she wanders beyond the frame of the porthole. His eyes search for her and find her again in another porthole, a small circle that encapsulates her face and the sea behind her. Like a photograph in an old-fashioned locket, but far better, for it's alive with her movements, the wind, the curling waves. It's a perfect moment for 1900. Everything that matters to him is right before him.

For the viewer, it's a beautiful combination of cinematography, music, and emotion; a three-minute story played out without words. You see 1900's emotions on Tim Roth's expressive face, but you hear them even more vividly in the music he plays.

There are other great scenes in the film, like the piano duel between Jelly Roll Morton (the inventor of jazz) and 1900. In that one, 1900's playing leaves you slack-jawed. But this is the scene that stops your heart, or reminds you that you have one and that it still responds to beauty and emotion. And music.

Playing Love, by Ennio Morricone

Wallace and Gromit are 20!

When I watched the 20th anniversary interview with Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Gromit, and learned how Hergé and his creation, Tintin (in the adventure "Destination Moon"), had inspired "A Grand Day Out," I was immensely pleased about the connection between two of my favorite story-tellers. Both draw up marvelous adventures of two fellows and their dogs, and during some important moments, it's the dog who saves the day (this happens way more often in "Wallace and Gromit" though). Gromit is often miles ahead of Wallace. And though both are terrific characters, it's Gromit who gets my favorite character vote. He's sensitive, an avid reader, a deep thinker, loves Bach, drinks tea, and though he's quiet, he has the most expressive face. And he knits!

So the pair are 20 now, but I sure hope this doesn't mean Nick Park will be slowing down. I'd love to see more of Wallace and Gromit! Their cheeky humor, the whimsical sets, the abiding friendship between them, Wallace's vests and nutty inventions, Gromit's rising and falling and twitching brow, the silly situations they get themselves into. 20 already! I think I'll celebrate by watching "The Wrong Trousers."

There is another sky

~ from Threadless tees

From windows in my father's house,
Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,
I watched Orion as a girl
Above another city's lights.

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,
The world's heart breaks beneath its wars,
All things are changed, save in the east
The faithful beauty of the stars.

~ from "Winter Stars" by Sara Teasdale

Sora, by Yoko Kanno from "Escaflowne"

Free falling: Don't think twice, it's all right

On my iPod, I have a playlist with songs about journeys, be they physical or emotional. One song appears a good number of times on that list because it's been covered by many singers. Joan Baez, Vonda Shepard, Indigo Girls, and of course the guy who wrote the song itself, Bob Dylan. I even have a French version.

Something about the finality of the farewell, the wistful bitterness between the lines, and the uncertainty of the future appeals to listeners, and singers too, as evidenced by the large number of them who've recorded or performed the song.

At work, I sometimes go up to the roof with my iPod and when this song comes on, I'll be staring at the cars rushing by and I'll be thousands of miles away.

"An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road
but I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's all right
...

So long, honey, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
Goodbye's too good a word, babe
So I'll just say fare thee well."

N'y Pense Plus, Tout Est Bien, by Hugues Aufray and Carla Bruni
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, by Ava Quigley

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When my wandering friend, M, came home this summer for a short stay, we spent an afternoon sharing a muffin in an empty cafe while it rained outside. Years before, we'd sat in the same cafe but back then, the walls were a different color and it had another name. And there had been three of us. I didn't say anything, but I knew he was thinking the same thing.

On the radio, John Mayer's "Free Fallin'" played softly, and M said how good a song it was. It's a Tom Petty cover, but Mayer makes it his own. Little else says "driving down an endless freeway under a blistering sky" like the strum and twang of an acoustic guitar. Like M, I'm a fan of this particular cover, and it's also a favorite on said playlist. It comes right after "Don't think twice, it's all right."

Free Fallin', by John Mayer

"There's a freeway runnin' through the yard
I'm a bad boy cause I don't even miss her
I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart
And I'm free, free fallin'
...
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
And the good girls are home with broken hearts
And I'm free, free fallin'
...
I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
Wanna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for a while."

The Witch's Boy

I meant to write about this little-known young adult’s novel earlier this year but as it is with most things, life got in the way and the idea slipped to the back-burner. But something reminded me about the novel recently and I decided to write about it before the year was up.

Although it’s classified as a young adult book, the novel has many themes that appeal to grown-ups and Gruber develops these so well that I was all but crying by the end. Actually, I was in that state for a good number of sections of the book. Michael Gruber deals unflinchingly with the psychological pain the protagonist endures as he grows and learns about the world around him. Without much heavy-handedness, he also highlights the literal and metaphorical masks with which the boy hides his physical and emotional selves. How sad and true to life it is, I kept thinking.

The characters are complex and incredibly well developed. A working mother (in this case, it is a witch-like woman who isn't quite a witch; I know this sounds contradictory, but it makes perfect sense in the novel) who tries to have it all and fails; a skeptical and clever cat; a simple-minded but nurturing bear with a deep abiding love for her charge; a self-absorbed and uncommunicative boy who has to grapple with the sudden knowledge that he is ugly, who yearns for and also tries to escape his mother's love, who almost grasps how much she has sacrificed for him but still breaks her heart through and through. I was stunned by the conflicting desires that rippled through the characters; they were tack-sharp of the ones that many of us endure and embrace all through our lives.

And did I mention that the book also makes clever riffs on well-known fairy-tales and fables like Bluebeard, Cinderella, and Rumpelstiltskin? I've read other novels by Gruber, but this one is my favorite.

"Lump looked at his mother’s face, and his vision began to blur with tears. This was the moment when he should have fallen on his knees and cried that he was sorry, that he knew that his pride and disobedience had brought them all to this ruin and that he loved her and was grateful for her immense sacrifice. If he had done that, they might have talked seriously about what lay between them for the first time in their lives, and something new and better might have come out of it. But such sacrifices are often unbearable for the young to contemplate, and so it was with Lump. He suppressed his tears; his eyes cleared, but the unshed tears fell inward, as such tears always do, and turned to ice and froze his heart."

~ from The Witch’s Boy, by Michael Gruber