Falling in love with sounds
Certain sounds, certain voices, can make me fall in love. I fall in love often. Not the kind of romantic, love-story types of love, but the kind of love that resonates deep within. The kind of love for which there are no words, no explanations, no definitions.
I always thought I would have at least one more night to watch To Kill a Mockingbird with my boys. They knew it was my all-time favorite movie, having so much to do with my history, my frame of reference for what’s right in the world…and what’s wrong. That night didn’t happen. I hope I can share it again with Nat, and have time to talk about those things that make the story important - to me.
Before Christmas of 2005, Owen, Helen, and I went shopping, and I bought the Director’s Cut of To Kill a Mockingbird. We were broke at the time, and I felt guilty at the check-out stand, knowing the DVD was not a present for anyone but me. I didn’t open it, but left it on the nightstand next to my bed for the next week.
Once that week had passed, I retreived the receipt from my wallet, and knowing we needed groceries, took the movie back to the store and returned it. I bought groceries, and went home feeling lonesome, but responsible.
Last year, before Christmas of 2006, Owen and I were back in California, choosing presents for the family at Best Buy. I came across the same version of the movie, and talked with him about whether I should buy it or not. He reminded me about having returned it the year before to buy groceries. I had forgotten completely, no recollection whatsoever. He said I should buy it. He carried his purchases, and I carried mine, to the check-out stand. As soon as that movie passed across the scanner, I recalled with crystal clear reflection, the sadness I had felt the year before when I returned the movie to buy groceries. Different towns, different states, different states of mind.
As we walked to the parking lot, Owen said, “I’m glad you can afford to buy the movie again, Mom.” I started crying, and he talked with me about things we can’t change, but can make better. I wish I could remember everything he said that day, because he really got who I was at that moment. And, I really got that he cared.
Last year’s Christmas was glaringly our last together - in retrospect. I hope I can write about it over the next few weeks, well enough, that my words can illustrate how obvious it was, that we would never again experience this season together as that family, in any similar way - to the way it had always been.
When I hear the score to this movie, I am both in love with the music, the voices, and the sounds of the setting - and destroyed at the loss of everything I grew up with and truly believed meant something, those things I associated with justice (and the lack thereof), goodness, forgiveness, acceptance, and love. If you know me, you probably know why this is my favorite movie. The associations with my real life are but the beginning. The hopes I drew out of the story as a young child, and took into my future, still live in my heart, and are not the end.
Owen had a friend in Bellingham named Atticus. My aunt went to school with Harper Lee. My dad was an attorney in the South. The list of things that make this story meaningful to me goes on, and I’m paralyzed by it and in love with it.
Nat and Owen watched this movie with me several times throughout their childhoods. Each time, they asked questions about why I loved the movie and the characters so much. Something I can’t fully express, were the sounds. Gregory Peck’s voice reminds me of my father’s - though I haven’t heard Daddy speak a word since the day he left our house for his last business trip in 1965. Another is the music. Another is the rustling of the leaves on the path from the school house back to Jem and Scout’s house in the dark. Another is the silence of Boo Radley.
Along with these sounds and more, silence is a sound which can make me fall in love. And, silence is a sound that can make me lose my mind. I wonder how far apart those two emotional states are - falling in love, and losing my mind.
Song for the night: movie score, To Kill a Mockingbird, Elmer Bernstein (connect to the link below if you can’t view the video - YouTube is quickly becoming difficult for my purposes - copyright problems???)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=27×0YSmMrrc&feature=related
emmitt-owen-riley
linda-siniard
Thank you for bringing To Kill A Mockingvird back to mind today, Linda. The memory brings back heavy disappointment and soaring hope. My parents were openly racist. Loudly so. As a child I was caught watching this movie and weeping, and the ridicule I received was painful.
If it were not for books like To Kill A Mockingbird, the only version of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ I knew would have been the ones in my home. That certainly would have been a tragedy. More so because it would have precluded me raising a child like Seanna, with love and gratitude.
After my mother died I made the effort to be the compassionate daughter sticking loyally to her lonely father’s side. I feel for his great loss, especially now, but his ideologies became too much to bear. The last time I saw my father was after throwing him out of my house for telling me that it was too bad Seanna didn’t die at birth. He called it “a shame” to have to live like she does and be “nothing but a burden and a hearbreak to her poor parents.”
Today’s post is choking me up. How far we’ve come…how far we haven’t…and how far we can because of mothers who raise your children with so much love and truth and trust as you have. I haven’t the heart to discuss such broken dreams as “justice” today.
steph
[...]but the kind of love that resonates deep within. The kind of love for which there are no words, no explanations, no definitions.[...] According to people such as Edgar Cayce, that is what it is ALL about… that kind of Love. Congratulations!
SOUNDS and “To Kill a Mockingbird”… Interesting. You may have hit on something. I’ve often thought I wanted to read the book and now that you mention the sounds, maybe that’s why I’ve alway found a way to put it off. The book without, the SOUND of: Gregory Peck’s voice, Elmer Bernstein’s music, all of the kid noises/voices, the silence when Atticus leaves the courtroom and everyone remaining stands in reverence, the wind in the leaves as Jem and Scout are running home from the schoolhouse that night… Sure the visuals are perfect, too… but the sounds. I could probably turn the movie on and close my eyes and the sounds would bring back all the visuals. Yes… OK…. I’ve SEEN it a FEW times.
Em
Beautiful, Emmitt. So, now, maybe it really is time to read the book, and IMAGINE the sounds. They’re all there, just waiting for you to hear them in your head. That’s where we hear sound anyway, right? How many times have you written a song in your head before you got your fingers on the keys? Mostly, I’m guessing. That’s how I write, and I think it’s how most of us HEAR. Love you, Bubba. L.