Emotionally Breaking...

I don't often watch movies because I don't feel a need for entertainment. Inside my head music flows nearly nonstop. Twisting through the music stories try to make their presence known, worming, wriggling, sailing, trying to beat the music in the path of escape...either a pen or the keyboard. Deep down I know I am damaged and unless you have ever had an emotional breakdown you won't be able to understand  the scars that creates.

Today I watched a movie at the recommendation of a hitch-hiker I recently gave a ride to when passing through Spokane. He rode with me for about an hour and before leaving he told me that he thought I should watch the movie "August Rush". We hadn't talked about movies but we had talked about music and he looked at my notebook of scores I carry. These are the scores that I wrote, that I play, that keep tumbling around trying to get out for others to hear. He said, "You really need to watch it!"

I forgot about it because I was busy with other things, but in the process of recovering from recent injuries I found my schedule has changed and I went to the library to find something to fill the gap. As I was leaving  my inner music directed me to the rack of DVDs and the first one I saw on the shelf was "August Rush".

I had no choice but to take it and go home to watch it. And then I returned it today, the same day I checked it out, because I don't think I can bear to watch it again.

The movie is FANTASTIC and if you have not yet seen it, you should get it. I am sure that many people failed to enjoy it, but I feel that more people felt part of the energy. I enjoyed it. I loved it and "love" is not a word I every use lightly. I was enthralled. I was mesmerized. And I was emotionally shattered.

I am not proud to admit that I had a mental breakdown ten years ago when my wife chose to run off. My children and I survived somehow and over the years I have recovered to where I wish there was somebody in my life again. I am an intellectual, and academic, a very strong minded person, and I did not believe in mental health issues - and yet, I collapsed.

Watching "August Rush" (2007) brought back so many thing of my life that tear at me and I was in tears. They were uncontrollable. I was sobbing. I could not breathe and my head hurt like a sledge hammer had struck me in the center of my forehead.

The boy, August Rush, (aka Evan Taylor) heard music everywhere and all the time. So do I. He was orphaned (erroneously). I was an orphaned as a child at age 4 (and then adopted) and again by my children a few years after I lost my wife and my life. He composes and conducts and so do I. And I could feel and hear his life.

The music and the portrayals within the film were exceedingly well done. The arrangements, the overall encompassing feel of the movie, and the deep, deep love that was being expressed, tore at my core - heart and soul. It was magical, expressive, and seared my heart as if a lance had been driven through me.

Life moves on and as time has passed so have on in my unique manner. Every day I know that I have music to write, music to play, words to write, life to express... August Rush did. I do. Many others also must express in many, many, forms of music and literature.

I hope that, I will rebound from this devastating release of pain much faster than I did before. Yet, if there is anything I can pass on from this experience the least would be that each of us needs to remember that there are people who must express with music, or art, or literature, or dance... They must in order to live, to stay alive, to grow.

I'm not afraid to tell you now, "I hear music. I see music. I feel music." I may never have a woman as part of my life again, and I both fear that and accept it because of who I am, but I am following the path presented to me that should be shared with a woman -- I am making music.

As my life moves on I hope that nobody ever has to feel the pain I have felt, and I wish that those who have felt worse find a soothing path in life.

I've been broken, I am damaged, and yet I am still whole. Music ... I hear it, I see it, and I feel it.