To Soothe the Savage Breast

 For anyone who hasn't seen The Shawshank Redemption, I can from my heart recommend this movie from WAY BACK---I can remember my own modest Mother, whose work ethic was strict and of high resolve, one day when she had gone to lunch and failed to return at her usual five-minutes-to-One to take over so I could go home. She called to say that she had settled in the den at noon with a sandwich and glass of tea, happened upon the first few moments of the movie, and just HAD to see "how it came out."

If you have not experienced this wonderful movie with its perfect cast and gifted actors, plus the absolutely sublime Stephen King writing---DO look it up.

In one of the brightest spots in a grim-spotted movie, of prison and of gray and of the beating-down of the humanity within, there are incandescent moments of LIGHT so bright they feed your soul. My favorite is when Andy Dufresne, convicted of murders he did not commit, had been given the task of administering the prison library.

He took on the small, dim space, with its creaky book-cart of handworn, many-times-read books and its dusty corners, and by writing to organizations and pestering the state legislature with something like a letter-a-week requesting funding, he was finally sent a few boxes of used books and records.

On one particular day, the guard stepped out for a moment, and Andy took out a big old slick black record from its worn sleeve, set it on the turntable, started it playing, and turned on the intercom/public address system for the whole prison---house and yard.

The men elbow-deep in hot laundry suds stopped their labor; the kitchen cooks and the machine shop grease-monkeys and the floor-moppers and the guards all looked up in wonderment as those silvery notes floated out over the gray walls and bare-trodden yard, as if they were seeing the very angels in the air who voiced the melody.

And Red, who was Andy's best friend---a pragmatic old lifer played by Morgan Freeman (imagine that rich, honey-syrup voice narrating the words), says:

"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are better left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it.

I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was as if some beautiful bird had flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ8ZHilxdm8

DUCK, REDUX

Way back in the nineties, we lived in a ground-floor apartment on the back of a building, with an entire vacant parking lot and great green lawn with picnic tables all to ourselves. We could have parties and great numbers of guests accommodated better than we could have in another wing. And there was another duck incident, but not of our own flock---well, not really, but the fact that the first two, Maurice and Velveeta, beat a path from the little fake-lake to our apartment door twice a day DID bring it about. The little couple then brought a banshee-bird with them, who squawked insistently for breakfast at our open bedroom window beginning at 5 a.m., day after day. We named her Miranda, just wishing she would remain silent, etc.

 THEN, the crowds grew, and we had go to the used bread store for enough to keep them fed, and when they brought their babies in little bobby lines, our lawn began to take on the look of a lakeside latrine. We tried stopping the feeding sessions. They gathered, muttered to themselves---probably dark and dire things about US, then began a clamor that the neighbors could hear, I’m sure. Radio Free Europe could have heard THAT lot.

 So we gave in on the bread, and hosed down the lawn twice a day, for we knew we'd be moving soon. When we moved to the third-floor apartment over by the lake, they STILL gathered under our balcony, and we’d Frisbee bread down, especially when the lake was frozen, so they’d have something to go in their little bellies. But while we were still on the ground floor, I would go out and sit on the patio with my earliest cup, while the birds gathered. There were probably sixty or seventy by then, all mingled with some white ones which had been there from when the place was built. 

 One morning, as I sat on the concrete, a white one appeared in the crowd, and got fairly near me. I could see a big tangle of fishing line all curled and snarled around one leg, so I coaxed him nearer with some bread. He got right up to my lap, so I stepped on the line and hugged him with both arms. He went into squawk-and-flap mode, with me struggling to get up off the concrete with my arms full of irate duck. I went in yelling for Chris, who came running to the clamor, stark naked and soaking wet, just out of the shower and thinking marauders had me. 

 We DID get the duck into the house for the snipping of all that cord, and I’m sure somewhere there’s a Candid Camera crew bewailing the fact that they missed out on the sight of two hefty middle-aged folks, one wet and naked, the other hanging on for dear life and laughing hysterically, cutting 15-pound test off the leg of a squawky, flappy duck.

MY FRIEND OLIVER

I'd dearly love to hear my dear, dear neighbor from Mississippi at his Steinway, playing Liebestraum and Pavane for a Sleeping Princess and Moonlight Sonata and the mystical, haunting Traumerei, which he always played for me after a hard day at work or when the boss’ mannerisms had been especially harsh. I would sit in his Mother’s little gooseneck rocker, and he would hand me a dainty glass of Tawny Port; I would rock and dream and it would soothe away the day, and by the end of the Schumann I was almost melted into the chair like a spent snowman, dwindling in the sun. My dear pianist friend’s fingers spilling forth Rachmaninoff’s Variation on a Theme from Paganini the first time I put the music in front of him---he sat down and it just channeled out and up, like leaves swirling against a wall. And the look on Chris’ sweet face at our wedding, as those same notes rang golden into the Summer afternoon, and I came around the corner of the lawn in the beautiful dress he had designed for me. I severely regret the misplacement of a plate-sized reel of tape during one of our various moves; I’ve had no way to play it again, as we have never had a reel-to-reel machine, but just the having of it was enough. It was the pinnacle of my friend’s career as an artist and teacher, playing The Age of Anxiety, with Bernstein conducting. And just to hold it in my hands would be a miracle, of sorts---all that talent and those gifted hands and minds condensed and graven into that fragile, spinning hoop of vinyl and dreams. I will never forget that sweet friend, purveyor of magical music, friendly welcome, and Southern charm. He was a fourth-generation pupil of Liszt, mentioned just once in passing, and his time and place were quite the anachronism to his great talent. His name was Oliver Manning, and he'd be 105 now. After his passing, his family had a yard sale, and my Mother bought me his plaque for the 1938 piano award from Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where he later taught, and a little bronze baby shoe---treasures I cherish for the memories.