Blue Valentine: Matters of the Heart

"Love is not a victory march it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah." The aching intonation with which Jeff Buckley sings that line in his cover of "Hallelujah" was the first thing that reverberated through my head after watching the movie Blue Valentine. The eerie stillness. The bittersweet. Love. It's a testament to the fact that love of the deepest nature can be as painful as it is pleasure. Rarely is the totality of this aspect of our most powerful relationships accurately captured and so completely conveyed in art…in a way that makes your bones creek. It's also true that the stories we all know about love gone awry are replete with the familiar themes of the scorned woman and/or the wayward man. The woman who's man no longer loves her or maybe never did. We hardly ever discuss the opposite. Rarely has there been a movie that is able to arrest so well both the scene and the sentiment of a man sunken to his knees, grabbing at sand as the tide comes in. But the truth is while that's a refreshing plot point in Blue Valentine, that's not what makes it a good movie. In fact Blue Valentine isn't a good movie..it's haunting. It captures the deterioration of a relationship so well, the sorrow in each syllable of the word "goodbye", it's scary and it hurts. In a good way of course.

The Truth

The second to last post here, The Turmoil Just Behind the Peace was both oddly and accidentally one of the most honest things I've ever written and sent me into an introspective spiral. And that damn song, "Pues"…well let's just say it isn't the best idea to listen on repeat while you gaze into the inner depths of your soul and rifle through the dustiest boxes in the dimmest recesses of your memory. Either that or it's the best idea ever. I haven't fully figured out yet. What can be said is that everybody must find the truth as it exist within them at a certain point in their life. Some do it on the playground when they're 3 yrs. old, others on their deathbed, and everybody else likely somewhere between those two extremes. There's of course the larger struggle of finding the truth as it exist in the larger world outside our windows, but that's another thing entirely. Most everybody figures that out after they take their last breath and whatever happens, happens…I'm assuming. But finding truth as it exist within ourselves just involves realizing at some point you have to stop getting in a boxing match with yourself and work your way through the world the way that little voice in your head keeps telling you to. If you want to be a clown, be a clown. Alexander Ebert's first words in "Truth" get right to the point: "truth is that I never shook my shadow/everyday it's trying to trick me into doing battle/calling out faker only get me rattled. " Shadow boxing your own shadow eventually wears you out and strips you down. Oh, and the names your own shadow will call you…completely unnecessary and inappropriate. And so, sooner or later we each just stop fighting. And that's the truth.

The Turmoil Just Behind the Peace

"Here's to the precariously perched highways of life that intersect with ease from a distance yet are filled with an unbalanced commotion."

You can't make someone love you.  Those who have had the experience of realizing this through experience understand the innate pain and agony that accompanies that statement. While it's easy to say and somewhat simple to understand, its outright torture to truly realize.  There's that moment when you have to watch the other person walk away for last time, and while you look at them you suddenly realize that it's not necessarily the last time you'll see them, but that it's the last time you'll see them attached with a feeling of hope. It's in that small moment that the rational part of our nature makes its greatest stand, attempting to beat back the tide of sentiment, screaming in a symphony of lyric-less music—you can't make someone love you.  When that moment ends the memory becomes an instrument of agonizing pleasure, reminding you of why the best was so good and the worst was so bad, while doing its best to feed that small feeling of hope as it slowly makes an exit. It's a tough and bittersweet lesson to learn and indeed the most stubborn among us never fully accept it. You can't make someone love you.  Here's a song that captures the beauty within the sorrow of watching someone walk away, sans hope, leaving you to your memory. Here's a song that goes out to the eerie splendor after the storm. Here's to the precariously perched highways of life that intersect with ease from a distance yet are filled with an unbalanced commotion. Here's to trying to make someone love you.  Here's to finding out you can't. It's a strange peace wrought with inner turmoil.