The opening battle sequence in the movie Cold Mountain realistically portrays the gruesome nature of Petersburg's "Battle of the Crater." Union engineers created a massive crater with explosives in an attempt to penetrate the Confederate lines. The scene is a graphic depiction of life's fragile nature. A reminder that there are times and places even in a "photoshopped" world... of atrocity and suffering and cruelty and sorrow.
Before the battle scene, we are introduced to young Oakley, a boy who is helping Inman (the main character of the story) and other confederate soldiers distributing supplies in the trench. As an aside, Inman comments to a fellow soldier about Oakley's age and that the boy is certainly too young for war. In the battle, Oakley is mortally wounded.
After the battle, a makeshift ER / triage is filled with cots and young bodies (including Oakley), many given whatever comfort that can be afforded in their final hours or minutes.
Stobrod--a fiddle player--stands by the bed and begins to entertain (and hopefully console) the boy.
"No," says Oakley, his breathing labored. "Play me something sweet, like a girl is waiting for me."
"You heard him," Inman tells the fiddler.
"I only know a couple of tunes," Stobrod tells them, now ill at ease.
"Like when you're up Bridge's creek," Oakley continues, "and you're thirsty and the water is so cool."
"I don't know what music that is," the fiddler confesses, his face crestfallen. Even so--to grant the dying boy's request--Stobrod puts bow to string and from the fiddle we hear haunting, lilting and evocative music.
Music as poetry.
Music as a picture to reassure the boy.
Music to carry his spirit safely back to Cold Mountain.
I don't know what music that is.
This is the part that trips us up. We are inculcated in a world where there must be a script. Whether it is happiness or contentment or success or well-being. All we need is the key, the correct information, the right dogma, or, the secret. Tantalizing isn't it?
I heard this promo for a TV product, "Tonight, unhappy with your love, your job, your life, not enough money? Then use your head. You can think yourself into a lot better you." Far be it from me to wage war against positive thinking. But we make a mistake if this is merely about "thinking" or attitude adjustment--(our cultural trifecta; analyze / think / change). (We sure do put a lot of stock into "figuring things out." And more often than not, we end up with a boatload of information--so much easier now with Google--all of it likely "true," but in the end, more of it than not, useless.)
No. This story is about presence.
Paying attention.
Being in this moment.
We've all been told to just "let go" or "let it be." And I have told myself to
"just chill." Sometimes it helps. Most times, not so much. It's as if it becomes another "thing" on my list. An assignment. You know, "Am I chilling enough?" Just wondering... "Do I need to read the right book about chilling before I attempt it?"
I don't know what music that is.
But I do know it when I hear it, even if I don't have the words. I do know that it makes my lungs swell and my heart flutter.
There are two aspects of the scene that touched me deeply.
One, I am drawn to the vulnerability or openness of the young boy (not only in his acceptance of his "fate," but in not fighting it, or trying to figure it out).
And two, I am struck and humbled by the transformation in the musician, who "knew" only two songs-- until he was invited to the music that is alive and well within his heart and soul. Music that had, for whatever reason, been dormant or buried or forgotten.
Tears have a purpose.
they are what we carry of the ocean, and
perhaps we must become sea,
give ourselves to it,
if we are to be transformed.
Linda Hogan
I will confess to you that. . .
I too easily play only the two songs I know.
I too easily tell myself that the price of playing and feeling the music inside of me that is multi-layered, authentic, life-giving and heart-rending may be too steep.
I too easily steel myself against anything that can break or rent or tear.
I too easily tell myself to live that vulnerable and open would require too much.
But here's the deal: When I live warily and guarded, I too easily miss the power--and the music--of the present. Music for joy and delight and wonder. Music to quench the thirst of our soul. And music for healing and soothing in those times when life turns abruptly left, and our options seem bleak, and our resolve tank is empty.
Recently, a young man I knew took his own life. We'll never know why, but "life is short, and this time it was bigger than the strength he had..." And I pictured Stobrod with bow to fiddle with the haunting, lilting and evocative music to carry this young man's spirit safely and tenderly back to Cold Mountain and to the angels. It affected me, and I journaled from my heart this week, looking for music that has been forgotten. Even so, I'm unsure how to finish this Sabbath Moment, so I step outside to toast the moon (almost full on a clear azure sky) and sit on the patio for a spell. And I remember another scene from the movie. When Inman and Ada meet, he wonders aloud, "If it were enough just to stand without the words." "It is," she tells him. "It is."
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore,
we are saved by love. Reinhold Niebuhr
(1) Inman was based on an ancestor of author Charles Frazier, about whom Frazier heard stories as a boy. Inman's desertion in the last year of the war and his climatic confrontation with the Home Guard are documented facts. But Frazier created most of the details of his hauntingly poignant story, including Inman's love affair with Ada Monroe, played by Nicole Kidman. (from www.stfrancis.edu)
(2) Charles Frazier describes the story as "a meditation on what we fear and desire, the way we react to violence on a personal level and how we move away from violence towards peace, home, and a way of life."
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