sometimes we are reminded of music

we watched a movie tonight that I have been wanting to watch for quite some time. It was not a movie I wanted to see in theatres, (didn't have the time nor inclination for the whole foray) nor something I wanted to rent, (since renting seems to be more a waste these days and once again no inclination for the whole foray).

So I waited for the movie to appear on TMN on Demand and it finally did. It was the Soloist, the movie about Nathaniel Ayers, and from what I got from it, the redemtive powers of both music and friendship. Granted there are many things that are wrong with the film and reinforce and confirm my non theatre paying and non rental of the movie by conventional method. The direction is awful, incoherent, choppy and poorly edited. It is also needlessly pompous and self-serving, trying to force higher meaning rather than letting the story allow the emotion to occur naturally. The movie takes shortcuts in the storytelling itself and the ridiculous idea that Robert Downey Jr, from an asthetic purpose could pass for an American born of Spanish and Italian origin is not only laughable but downright insulting at points when you hear the name "Steve Lopez" over and over and see Iron Man, it seems slightly disingenuous. But that really isn't too important. It stops it from being a great and perhaps superb film, but it isn't important.

It isn't important because at the very least and most importantly the core message of the film, that music is vital, vibrant and redemptive, that friendship is vital, vibrant and redemptive, pulses through. Here is the crux, even though RDj plays Steve Lopez, he does such a fine fine job you end up forgetting the absurdity of the a white guy playing some halfway white guy. He makes him human and accessible, he plays him so well he becomes just human. Even better is how beautifully, how touchingly Jaime Foxx plays Nathaniel Ayers. Foxx has to be one of the best actors I have ever seen and if I had paid theatre or rental money for this film it would be worth it for hte performance of Foxx and Downeyjr alone. They make a mediocre-bad movie actually watchable and kind of good.

The movie also got me thinking which is another (plus in its favour) about two things. The first was how close we all are to crazy. And by crazy I do not wish to convey the derogatory. I mean to covey how I grew up and still identify the terminology of crazy - madness. Illness of the mind. I think we are all so close, so precariously close to breaking points each and every day, that it is wonder that we consider ourselves sane and continue to operate in a "normal" fashion. By the same token it is also remarkable that we don't respect the chorus of voices inside our heads perhaps as much as we should, that we try as hard as we can to hut them our, tune them out and distract ourselves from the noise with other noise. Madness it neither a choice nor a solution, it is an acceptance, often a wrenching acceptance, of absurdity, fear and the pressures of living up to our own and the perceived expectations of the world around us. Sometimes, these ideas just hit home a little harder, and tonight was one of those times. There are moments, perhaps small, statistically insignficant moments but personally relevant moments where we teeter on the edge, tremble at our loose footing and feel with all our being the absurdity of our every breath, the madness of our every step. For me the movie really hit home on that level.

The other part of the movie that was so important for me was the music and what it made me articulate to myself. Not just that I love music, love the passion, the desire for and the redemption that music brings. It was something far more tangible and direct.

I love stringed music.

This is something so superficial and exoteric to take from the film, but I am indebted to it for that. It made me realize how much I love stringed instruments, especially cellos, violins and guitars. It then went deeper into how much I love sustained notes. The pull of the note, how it soars and pierces. The note as it moves along, the lingering of a note, the movement and shadow of the linger, how it can cut you so deeply, wound you and still make you smile. For that alone I am so happy to have watched the movie.

So if anything, it should be all over the net or in any library and is probably public domain ...listen to Beethoven's Violin Concerto In D Major, the Allegreto, and I defy you tell to me you did not think of everything in your life, every lingered moment, every bated breath, every rain night and slow sunny day. I defy you tell me you did not for even one moment feel that stab in your chest that you could not place in a definitive moment, but that it made you sad, that it made you smile and that you did not feel alive in the contradiction itself. There are many more pieces like this, many more songs that aren't "classical" that evoke this, but I listened to this one tonight, a rainy, cool, cloudy damp night in Toronto and thought somehow we should share it wherever we were.

-s

"from the freecity, no matter how many time we say or remain quiet."