26 June 2009
The Blower's Daughter, Closer, Parker and love
)Published on June 26th, 2009 @ 02:34:35 pm, using 924 words, 112 views
It seems there’s love behind everything. Love shaped to resemble anything you can think of. And all too often, love made out to be the prize. I distrust anything and everything that makes love out to be immaculate and a source of endless joy.
Damien Rice first came to my attention in a dark screening room as an unfamiliar voice delivering a haunting song, with lyrics that sounded personal and required a context to be understood. The context on that particular rainy afternoon was the inherent complexity of human entanglements.
Subtle strokes of musical genius presented under the name The Blower’s Daughter accompanied two versions of Natalie Portman walking in utter self-confidence towards the audience (just short of The Purple Rose of Cairo). Two versions of the same character, in fact - the person you don’t know and the person you thought you knew. The story, or rather the vignettes sandwiched between those versions, and the metamorphosis that blended them close to seamlessly, were impressive all on their own. An uncompromising ‘wake up and smell the (bitter) coffee and drink it down to the last sip while you’re at it’ sort of cinematic experience. A movie that, while mainstream, manages to bypass every mainstream hint of restraint and shows it to you like it is. No air brushing. No sugar coating.
Here. Love isn’t always pretty. Love can come your way escorted by black sheep: jealousy, selfishness, possessiveness, pride, cruelty, inconsiderateness, shamelessness, corroding dissatisfaction. Love - ‘real’ love as we’ve come to know it from our tour of the sugar coating factory that can be human creativity - often has a hard time standing a chance. Take a couple of minutes to check out the trailer for Closer. Think about the words on the screen.
Love is an accident… waiting to happen.
Desire is a stranger… you think you know.
Intimacy is a lie… we tell ourselves.
Truth is a game…you play to win.
If you believe in love at first sight… You never stop looking.
There’s a hint of Dorothy Parker to that last line, isn’t there? There’s that quip at the end. That one line or verse that throws you off, that lands you in a spot different from the destination you had in mind, that tricks you. This is my favorite Dorothy Parker:
I do not like my state of mind;
I’m bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn’s recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I’m disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I’d be arrested.
I am not sick. I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore:
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men.
I’m due to fall in love again.
(Symptom Recital)
And then there’s the song… The Blower’s Daughter… The same abrupt change of direction right at the end. But truer, I guess. Softer, quieter, sadder, seriously taken. Not something to quip about, just something to face. Something that gets you a step closer (no pun intended) to reality, and frees you to make wiser decisions.
That song carries in every note of its 4 minutes and 44 seconds the weight of human relationships. What the movie takes 103 minutes to convey.
Beyond the lyrics, deep inside those notes and chords, hidden inside the sadness of Irish longing, there’s the unwanted, often disregarded, suppressed, ‘relegated-to-breathing-heavily-under-the-rug’ truth that everything is transient. Listen closely. Listen right up to the very end. ‘…Till I find somebody new.’
Love, I have found, is temporary. It’s, uh… it’s stupid, but it’s like a weed, you know? If it’s there you don’t have to pay that much attention to it. It just… it just grows, with just a little bit of water. But if you really try, you can kill it. It… it doesn’t have a home. It’s transient. If it’s not wanted, it’ll just move on.
(Unhook the stars)
Damien Rice songs open a human-sized bubble in the air whenever and wherever I may be listening to them and usher me inside. There’s peace and quiet inside that bubble. Peace and quiet unlike any I’ve felt. There’s floating in the breeze, earthly weightlessness, the smell of the sea and a promise of sailing, there’s room for thought and the incomparable feeling of letting go.
I’m not one to get emotional over music but there is the occasional stroke of instrumental or vocal genius that defies my stoicism. Nessum Dorma sung by Pavarotti (Turandot). The prayer quality of ‘Cold Water’ which I’d be willing to bet reaches God faster than any traditional form of praying. The beautiful climactic violin solo in ‘The Animals were gone’ (Damien Rice). The bit of Finnish opera right towards the end of ‘Eskimo’ (yes, him again). Beauty strangely placed, like a dolphin in the middle of a jungle, a horse galloping on ice in Antarctica. These are - to me - worth shedding tears over.
Suzanne Vega - Caramel/Nine Objects of Desire
This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Damien Rice, music, genius, love, Closer, Natalie Portman, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Dorothy Parker, quip, Unhook the Stars, transient, relationships, longing, The Blowers Daughter, The Animals were gone, Eskimo, Cold Water
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