I love words. Here are some of my favorite ones ever spoken: “There will be an answer. Let it be. – The Beatles……....“I did it my way.” – Frank Sinatra…..…. “Don’t Stop Believin’ – Journey……....“I read, much of the night, and go south for the winter.” – T.S. Eliot…….“Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.” – Woody Allen……….“All good books have one thing in common. They are truer than if they had actually happened.” – Ernest Hemingway……….“Would a journey not be worth taking if at the end of which, in the other world, we were delivered from all the pretend judges here? – Plato, Apology……….“You are my only love. You have me completely in your power. I know and feel that if I am to write anything noble and find in the future I shall do so only by listening at the doors of your heart.” – James Joyce to Nora……….“Basically I’m for whatever gets you through the night. But it prayer, tranquillizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels.” – Frank Sinatra………. “He [Shakespeare] was not of an age, but for all time.” – Ben Janson in To My Beloved Master William Shakespeare………. “We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl. Year after year. Running over the same old ground, what have we found? The same old fears?” – Pink Floyd………. “We live as we dream. Alone.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness……….”Yet now I must confess, that duty done, my thoughts and wishes bend again toward France.” – Shakespeare, Hamlet………. “I’ve always known myself, but he was the first one to recognize me. And the first to love what he saw.” – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre………. “There is only the fight to recover what has been lost. There is only the trying.” – T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets……… “The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth and a truth which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Plato’s or Aristotle’s definitions, strictly like that of Antigone of Sophocles?” – Ralph Waldo Emerson…… “The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the face of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.” – Marge Peircy………. “It’s a fierce game I’ve joined because its being played anyway, a game of both skill and chance, played against unseen adversary – the conditions of time—in which the payoffs, which may suddenly arrive in a blast of light at any moment, might as well come to me as anyone else.” – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek………. “If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” – Charlotte Bronte………. “All one has to do to be a writer is write. We’re writers only when we’re writing.” – Alan Shapiro

Sunday, August 2, 2009

How Do You Solve a Problem like the Sound of Music?

As an only child who can carry a tune, I always loved the Sound of Music. The Von Trapps were livin’ the dream. Forging every stream. But think about it, a big old singing family. When I have my own big old singing family, I hope my kids can learn the valuable life lessons this worn out VHS has taught me:

Remember kids, “when you read you begin with A-B-C, when you sing you begin with Do-Rae-Me.” Now I have learned a lot of things in my life, but what am I still always doing? Reading and singing. Thanks Maria.

And, what do you do “when the dog bites, when the bee stings, or when you’re feeling sad?” Simply remember your favorite things, “and then it won’t feel so bad.” Mr. Woody Allen seems to agree with this. (See the second-to-last scene in Manhattan).

Then there’s the ultimate adage. The foundation of the entire film. The song for the lovers, the dreamers, and me. “Climb Every Mountain.” You remember the emotional ending. The hills—alive with 1960’s cinematography. The score that brings a tear to your eye and a goosebump to your arm. The happiest of happy endings. To a ten-year-old.

But to a college graduate sitting in a tiny apartment eating Chinese takeout, the scene looks different. Bleaker. But the scene does warrant a break in the waves of my channel surfing. I never could pass up this movie. As I sat there, watching good triumph over evil yet again, it occurred to me: My God, what if the Von Trapps are not ok? I mean sure they escaped this time. But that’s a big-ass mountain and there are Nazi’s out there. What’s worse is they will always be running away; with—mind you—nothing but a song and a dream. I guess it worked for the American Idols, but really?

So I guess The Sound of Music continues to teach me, even at 23. There is a fine line between chasing dreams and running away. Is there even a winner in that race? Does chasing your dreams always lead you away from home? Perhaps Maria should take a cue from Dorothy.

Ouch. Now that I think about it, an equally currently-depressing-once-childhood-favorite. Tonight in my own personal philosophical black hole, these are the only conclusions I can see: The yellow brick road might not lead to Oz, and the other side of the Swiss mountains may not be safe and free.

Apparently MGM and 20th Century Fox seem to be under the impression that at the end of a rainbow, a person finds everything they ever wanted. Just “follow every rainbow ‘til you find your dream,” or that “land, that you heard of once in a lullaby", is where? “Somewhere over the rainbow.”

What they never tell you is how you get through all that rain. Cue Mary Poppins.
Now there is a character I’d like to be. Think about it, she comes into people’s lives, sings a few songs, invents a truly quotable word, and then disappears without so much as an “adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.”

A tough pill to swallow, and unfortunately there isn’t a spoon full of sugar big enough to help that medicine go down.

So, perhaps there really is no place like home, and that’s too bad for me. And it’s too bad for Maria and Mary who were both forced to run away from their homes. And poor Dorothy, hers got swallowed up by the Kansas sky.
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1 comment:

  1. Diane JohnsonAugust 19, 2009 at 8:11 PM

    The Wizard of OZ and The Sound of Music are two of my all time faves... love your take on it.

    Dorothy: "It really was no miracle. What happened was just this..."

    You write so well! I'd expect nothing less I guess.
    Diane

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