Every now and then someone will post the question, "If you were stuck on an island, what music would you take with you?" - truthfully, I hate those questions. However, my answer would be this piece by Thomas Newman.
It's been years since I first heard the voice of it. Every note strikes at me and fills me with a tragic sadness. It's a mourning. It's a solemn respect. It's a nod filled with precise recognition. It's the sobriety that no one wants to face for too long or else your heart will break.
It's my confession.
It wraps around me like a shroud and I wear it without shame. It's warmth in some sadistic way. It's all the pain and suffering and sacrifice collected into one melody. It's a salve to the soul applied with a quiet understanding and acceptance.
It's hauntingly beautiful.
I could listen to it forever.
It was also, suitably, the theme for the movie, "White Oleander" - formerly a book by Janet Fitch.
"How do I show that nothing; not a taste, not a smell, not even the color of the sky has ever been as clear and sharp as it was when I belonged to her.
I don’t know how to express that being with someone so dangerous...was the last time that I felt safe...
The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert that fall.
Only the oleanders thrived.
Maybe the wind was the reason my mother did what she did.
If it was, I wouldn't have known.
I lived in her shadow then.
She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.
Everybody thinks that when they're small...
...but she was the most beautiful woman most people had ever seen.
He came into our lives without warning.
She ignored him at first.
He wasn't her type.
We laughed about him, his persistence.
"Never let a man spend the night," she said. "Never apologize, never explain."
She was breaking all her rules.
And it would change everything.
What are you doing up here?
Come sit next to me.
It's the best place to feel the wind.
I can feel it from here.
No, you can't.
It's okay.
You should get some sleep.
I never sleep.
I've been up here for hours."
The entire movie:
"Two years after Paul and I moved to New York...
...I received a letter from my mother.
In it was the Los Angeles Times Magazine, my mother on the cover.
A Santa Monica gallery had mounted a showing of her work.
The Times included seven pages...
...of her hauntingly distant prison collages.
She stares out from the cover, the bars of her cell behind her.
Beautiful.
Dangerous.
Proud.
The Times said she was close to winning a retrial after a first failed appeal.
They called her show a triumph.
It's too much to imagine her tempering her joy with a moment of grief...
...a moment for what that triumph had cost.
These suitcases are a map of that country...
...a terrible country I will never revisit.
Even so...
...I find myself thinking of her...
...wanting to feel that wind.
It's a secret wanting...
...like a song I can't stop humming...
...or loving someone you can never have.
No matter how much she's damaged me...
...no matter how flawed she is...
...I know my mother loves me."
Michelle Pfeiffer is the most beautiful woman alive today as far as I'm concerned.
Only to be out-done by Irene Dunne from the past...
She plays a BRILLIANT role in this movie.
White Oleander is a beautiful flower that prospers in California. It could never be anything more than an annual in New York. For that reason, when I can, I have them flown in from California to plant in the garden of whatever residence I'm at.
Pink.
Red.
White.
And poisonous.
After all, all the truly beautiful things in the world are dangerous - and if not handled properly, can be fatal. It's worth the risk to me because I have a deep respect for anything that can kill without a conscience.
That, and I don't go around licking my plants - so, we're good.
The song, "Safe and Sound" that plays at the end of the movie by Sheryl Crow. Not music I'd take to the island with me, but it's good for at least one run through on flat land.
Smiles...
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