When Brambles Shred Feathers

Lately I have got to thinking about how we are perceived by those we love or interact with.  When our words barrel from our tongues or we fumble through our actions, how do our motives come across? Do we always show what we mean? And, if what we show are brambles when we truly feel feathers, are we justified?

I recently watched the 2011 French drama "Chicken with Plums" ("Poulet aux Prunes") about a renowned violinist who loses all taste for music when his violin is broken and so decides to die.  Nasser Ali, the violinist, begins the story searching for any violin that can make a sound as beautiful as the one he has lost, but all are found lacking and his heart is irreparably broken.  He spends the next eight days laying in bed contemplating his life, denying the pleas of his family, and awaiting his end.  Throughout the story, the true importance of the instrument is brought to light and the full measure of the chasm that has formed in his heart and being is revealed as insurmountable.  One realizes that, at some point, his brokenness will surely claim him.

The women in this story, though, are my main focus for this topic.  Nasser Ali lays his heart bare.  He loves his music and hates the wife his mother forced him to marry, Faringuisse.  Faringuisse is a temperamental math teacher whose every word to him is a shrill tirade about his poor parenting or poor husbanding or just poor act of being human.  Her rage leads her to do the unforgivable, to break the instrument dearest to him.  Behind this harsh exterior, Nasser Ali is unaware of the timid woman who has loved him since childhood and just wants a fraction of the affection he shows to his music.  She spends a lifetime cursing him, but his last few days begging for his forgiveness.  However, he has always loved Iran, a beautiful and mild mannered woman whose father refused to let him marry her in his youth.  He sees Iran walking with her young grandson on his quest for a replacement violin and she denies remembering him, plunging him into despair.  What he does not see is that, when she knows she is beyond his view, she crumbles against a wall and all the tears she has shed for him over the years are renewed.  She is reminded of all the nights that she had listened to the tune of his violin over the radio and had wept doubly- at the beauty of his music and for the love she had lost.  Neither woman can bring herself to reveal her truth, one out of fear and the other out of necessity.  I wonder if the pain they cause him is validated because they love him.

This story reminds me of two things in particular.  Firstly, a melancholic predisposition is not only metaphorically heavy, but physically so as well.  It bears down on one's mind and soul until they crack open, allowing it to grip the body in its vise.  Secondly,  with all our complexities, we often enter into these dichotomous liaisons with others.  They may be romantic, professional or friendly, but they are almost always destructive.  Any two-fold interaction allowing for motives to be buried beneath contrary actions or words will inexorably tumble into quicksand.  I suppose it is quicksand that we all must encounter at some time or other, but is it worthwhile for those we interact with to be suffocated when we mean to cushion them? 

In the song "Landfill", Daughter asks her "torturous" love to throw her in a landfill, push her out to sea or leave her to freeze in the snow and simply walk away.  She both wants and hates this torturous love, but can no longer withstand it.  Maybe severance is the only solution when the brambles begin to shred the feathers.

"Landfill"- Daughter