The Importance of Art
Some years ago, I’d been talking to a friend quite often, as we had been traveling together. We’d sit and talk about the most idiotic, most meaningless and unusually funny things you could possibly imagine, I would laugh so hard I thought I would die, but sometimes we also talked about serious things like faith, music, women, etc.
A conversation took place that I will now provide for you in screenplay format as best as I can remember it.
Adrian and friend are in the backseat of a van. Adrian removes earphones to speak:
-Adrian: I love this piece so much, I’d love to incorporate something like this to the music that I make.
-Friend: Yea it is very nice.
-Adrian: Music is so important you know? It’s a miracle really…
-Friend: I know what you mean, but there is something else more important.
-Adrian: What’s that?
-Friend: Lyrics. Lyrics are the most important part of music.
-Adrian: I don’t know about that.
-Friend: I think once you grow up you will understand.
It’s been about 4-5 years since that conversation, and either I have not grown at all, or there’s more to music than what most people think.
It’s funny how sometimes you find scraps of the most meaningful things in life in the most unexpected of places. Many miracles lie hidden in the yet unseen corners of life.
Original Music from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by Nicholas Hooper.
Track 17: Farewell Aragog.
After listening to this, the track reproduced itself over and over for days inside of me. And it changed everything.
Let me explain:
Sometimes a certain melody takes a hold of me. It plays in the back of my mind all day. A melody that plays with the majestic reality of life. It changes absolutely everything. It flirts with you. It dances with you.
People and places hold within them the beauty of space and time, the marvelous evidence of the hand of God in the spirit of the earth.
Everyone has a suffering melody inside of them, not always of pain or grief but of a yearning for hope and joy. Not everyone is capable of reproducing these inner melodies, though I do know some people that are very much like living instruments, reproducing beautiful and nostalgic melodies by simply living.. No singing.. No notes..
And when you find this miraculous melody, it is so similar to the one in your heart that it resonates to the deepest core of your soul. A duo, perfect in harmony. It is a tremendous weight off of you. Someone feels like you. What your soul so desperately needs to sing is sung back to you.
And you feel peace.
God is singing to you.
God singing to you through the melodies of his creation. Us. Nicholas Hooper.
And that ladies and gentlemen is the miracle of music.
The marriage of lyric and melody cannot be divorced. What a tragedy it is when it occurs. Like separating a couple that is deeply in love with each other.
Don’t disturb the adventurous and passionate love affair of lyric and melody.
Love affairs. Speaking of love affairs, it reminds me of last night when I spoke to my friend again and told him about my new found perspective on music.. He said:
”That is true, and you know what? That is very much like when you meet your soulmate.. She comes to you, singing the melody of your own soul.”
Wow.
That is beautiful isn’t it?
My friend also recently had a baby, so I asked him:
“What kind of melody does Zoe sing to you??”
He said: “She sings a melody that reminds me that I can fall in love every day.”
And it got me thinking… No wonder Jesus was so emphatic about loving everyone everyday at all times.. Hopelessly.. Because it is a true tragedy when people forget to love. Lack of love leads to loneliness.. And like one of my favorite authors puts it:
“If loving people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell..”
That goes for music.
Now for the miracle of cinema.
Like every happy&healthy family, my family has gone through some rough patches. There were moments when the sadness of a situation would attempt to pull us apart, to build barriers between us. Aside from God’s deliverance, film always took on a big role when it came to bringing the family together during dark times.
During dark times one becomes very fond of sleeping. You sleep during the day. You find yourself waking up sometimes at 7 PM from the nap you started at 5.
I’d lie in my bed, waking up to the taste of hopelessness. I’d wake hoping that my misfortunes would simply be a big joke that my own dreams pulled on me. But it wasn’t so. I’d look around my room, everything lost color, my pillow was wet from tears, my bible was set next to me, open from when i raked it for an answer, for a beam of light to shine upon the darkness of my time. I’d blink to the rhythm of a requiem. The requiem of hope. There would be a pain in my chest from the sad melody that my soul reproduced.
Then dad would knock on my door.
An invitation to come downstairs to… watch a movie.
My house then came alive like the tuning of an orchestra right before the symphony as my dad walked to each of our doors to wake us and invite us to watch a movie with him. As a family.
We’d gather pillows and blankets and set them on the floor of our living room. Then the movie began. My dad would always pick the greatest movies.
Movies are great because they bring people together. The very essence of a movie is unity. From the content of a movie which is interaction between people to the people that make the movie. You ever sit through the end credits? That big list of people that offered their services to help create the movie?
Take one person away from that list, and there will be chaos.
Don’t believe me?
Try making a fairly good quality movie by yourself.
With good lighting, good sound, good camera movement, good focus, good script, good catering, good actors, good directing…. I could go on and on.
ANYWAY.
Movies bring people together. At home and at the theater. It truly is a beautiful thing.
Movies always played a big part in my life as I was growing up.
I remember my dad taking me to the movies every other week.. It truly was like magic the way that the curtains opened, the lights dimmed down in a sexy sort of way that I cannot explain, the sound of a projector began as a beam of light stretched across the theater to display a moving image on the giant white screen, excpet at that very moment, it was not white anymore, but it filled with the images that together made up a visual story that resonated with my heart exactly like a melody. Like Magic.
Film is one of the ultimate forms of escapism.
Just try it. Whenever you feel sad, or lonely, whenever there are problems in your home, knock on everyone’s door and watch a movie together.
It will change everything.
