The Princess Bride
My all time, ultimate, favorite movie ever is The Princess Bride.
Years ago I was forced to decide upon my favorite movie. There were so many choices that it was especially difficult to arrive at one above all others. I settled on this one, again, for personal reasons. I was 16 when I watched it for the first time, and I was fighting an especially difficult to hide crush on someone much older than me. Such a hopeless romantic I was. And I thought he was my true love.
Within the first ten minutes, I knew it would be a permanent favorite, mostly because the subject of the movie was true love. How perfect. Since I knew my crush would never come to fruition, the fantastic plot of the movie touched me. Many of the scenarios were completely impossible, yet they ended up happily ever after in the end. I suppose that silliness made me feel there was hope for me.
Besides the whole idea of true love, this movie has many other wonderful qualities. Not only do we have the stories of Wesley and Buttercup, but the lives of the Sicilian, the giant and the Spaniard become entwined with theirs. We hear their stories and see how their life journeys have intersected their paths. While some of the stories are unbelievable and don’t really make sense, there is still an ultimate purpose: Wesley and Buttercup were meant to be together.
In the end, they would never have found each other without the help – or interference, however you want to look at it – of the others. Though from their perspective, they weren’t actually helping, they played a necessary part in helping things turn out the way they did. To the giant and the Spaniard, true love was a living, breathing thing that designed a plan to bring the Wesley and Buttercup together.
I love this idea, but don’t necessarily believe it. Unfortunately I have become jaded over the years. To find that hopeless romantic these days, I have to watch The Princess Bride. And however fantastic or unbelievable it sounds, the story always gives me hope that true love does exist and that it can overcome all obstacles.
Even if I reach the point some day where I feel love is a joke (I’m not there yet!!), I will still love this movie. I think I will always be able to remember the feeling I had the first time I saw it. The Princess Bride, however silly it may seem, will always serve as a sobering reminder that love is silly, but I have to believe in it to find it.
Nirvana
Ah, Nirvana. That thing we all wish to reach whether we are Buddhist or not.
By one definition, it is a place or state characterized by freedom from or oblivion to pain, worry, and the external world. By another, it is one of the greatest bands to ever exist on this planet.
I like both definitions. And I for sure agree with the second one.
Though I was alive and well, stumbling blindly through my teenage years while the band Nirvana was at its pinnacle, I did not listen to them. I only discovered them six years ago. Perhaps my love of Nirvana is connected to the way I first heard them. Yeah. I know you’re surprised.
So quickly, here is the scene: my BFF and her new boyfriend broke up, I thought it was the wrong decision, we were at a party, he and I hopped into my car to talk about it, he popped Nevermind into the cd player, and we ended up talking about Nirvana for an hour and a half. That’s how my love was born. (They’re married now, so I suppose everything worked out.)
Naturally, I was at an unhappy place in my own life, so this discovery jettisoned me into a journey of discovery. I researched Nirvana obsessively and purchased Nevermind and In Utero for myself. Those are still the only albums I own. Oh, wait. I do own Unplugged in New York on cassette, but I no longer have a cassette player.
I know I just gushed over Jennifer O’Connor’s ability to tell a story in every song, but I admire Cobain’s ability not to tell stories just as much. His ability, in my opinion, was in finding words that matched feelings whether they made 100% sense or not. For instance, Scentless Apprentice from In Utero. “She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak – I’ve been locked inside your Heart-Shaped box for weeks – I’ve been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap – I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black.” Hmmmm. There is no way I can translate that into a story that resonates with me personally. But it moves me, and I love it.
Nirvana chose to have wild, emotion-based lyrics that were often drowned out by the loud, hard sounds of the instruments. This is a musical accomplishment of a different sort. Though I had to break out the lyrics book that accompanied the cd before I understood a word they said, I connected with it immediately. The raw emotion embodied in their sound was too strong to ignore.
I associate strong emotion with Nirvana music. I adore watching their videos, and would hang posters all over my walls if I could justify it. Instead, I choose to roll down the windows and turn up their music every time I’m feeling particularly pissed off at or alienated by the world. Nirvana was really on to something. There is no band that can compare to them. When I’m having a “Nirvana moment” only their music can make me feel better.
Jennifer O’Connor
I found Jennifer O’Connor on NPR. I was killing time one afternoon surfing past episodes of World Cafe and came across her interview. After listening to the songs she played and to what she had to say about life and music, I immediately bought her album Over the Mountain, Across the Valley and Back to the Stars.
O’Connor’s sound is unique, a mix of folk, blues and rock, and her voice is clean and full of emotion. Her perspective is fresh, but there is a hint of an old soul. I’m always a sucker for an old soul.
While I don’t discount the ability of all songs to tell some kind of story, I often find that I am not able to connect with music because I cannot identify with their stories. O’Connor’s stories are interesting and intellectual, and her voice allowed me to feel her stories on a variety of levels.
In Dirty City Blues, she says “If the microphone is broken I will scream in the street – I will love you like the woodpecker can only love the tree – I feel the wasted afternoon trying to clamp its teeth in me – I’m going to try now – I’ll try now to be free.” It spoke to the voice in my head that realizes I am about to turn thirty and is afraid that I have already lived all I can live. That fear, it’s trying to clamp its teeth in me. I acknowledge it, and regardless of whether O’Connor is acknowledging a similar fear, she knows that feeling.
In A Complicated Rhyme, again I was able to connect the lyrics to that grand journey of life. “A morning spent on your own – With too much coffee and a telephone – You navigate the lapse – Between what’s coming and what has passed – A complicated rhyme – A bumpy ride through space and time.” Oh, how many of those mornings I have had, energizing my brain with coffee and cigarettes trying to figure out how to make it all make sense. This particular song also lends itself to the memory of relationships passed and time spent replaying every word only to find the answer to “where did it go wrong?” is completely obvious.
Though she is only 23, you get the sense that O’Connor has a vast reservoir of experiences at her disposal. Whether her experiences are many or few, she does a fabulous job of translating them into beautiful melodies that are on a level anyone can understand. I think this is part of her gift. Her music transcends barriers of age, gender and belief, making her music marketable on every level.
By strumming her own guitar and keeping the tunes simple, she only adds to the intrigue. Instead of cluttering the listeners mind with complicated riffs and loud instruments, every sound perfectly compliments her words. Each song is a poem set to music.
O’Connor sings of things universal; emotions and experiences that everyone can understand. And she does it beautifully, soulfully and originally.
Permission to Over-Analyze 