The Piano Lesson

If you haven’t watched the movie, don’t read this because there will be details of the movie in it. However, you can watch it on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baAWP5_0RZ0) and come back to this after.

In life you will see things that may not mean much at one moment, but later “the truth changes color depending on the light” (Eve’s Bayou).

I recently found a movie that my parents had shown me and my sister called, “The Piano Lesson” starring Charles S. Dutton, and Alfre Woodard. It’s set in 1930′s Pittsburgh, and tells the story of a family’s piano that holds their history…and the soul of the slave owner they stole it from. Now, watching this as a kid, it’s just something else my parents showed us, and I liked it because it was entertainment. And then I grew up…

Now, it represents the fight to get out of slaves hand, and move forward as a black person. To be something, and do something more than your parents did because you have the choice and more of the freedom to do so. The value of holding onto our history, and our story…and learning if it’s worth selling it to better yourself. Not to forget it, just, to better yourself.

In the movie Boy Willie is in a constant argument with his sister Bernice about selling the piano that their father stole back from the overseer who owned their family. Some would say it’s disrespectful to sell your family’s history to gain some land so that he, ”no longer have to work for someone else”(which…is a great feeling). Others would say that there is nothing wrong with him wanting to get out and stand on his own two feet without the white man making him doing. After all, it is JUST a piano…right?

Bernice told how their mother would polish the piano everyday with her tears (crying over the loss of her husband who died because he stole the piano), and that as she was rubbing in her tears, her hands would begin to bleed and she rubbed the blood into the piano as well.  Their history carved into the wood, their mothers sweat, blood and tears making it beautiful….why would anyone want to sell it? But how do you deny a man his dream?

Now, while your dreams may not involve you selling a family heirloom, what is the cost? And is it worth it? I believe that sometimes it is, simply because at some point, the risk may turn around and become something more amazing than you or anyone around you would have thought and now you have begun to open their eyes. Maybe I’m rambling…

There have been some very harsh remarks made about this movie. And, I can understand them. In a way it seems like a less well-written version of “Beloved” (another movie you should see) because of the idea of a family torn and brought together by a spirit of the past. The ending is a bit lack luster, but sometimes it’s more about the lesson that some extravagant ending…that is, if you get a lesson out of it at all. Which, not everyone will. 

Enough rambling, go check the movie out. I was so happy to find it on YouTube, because my family has been searching for it like crazy. Especially since the recording we have of it is messed up. I’m glad to have brought back some memories.

Until next time…keep chasin’!

Wonder...

You ever come to the realization that...you love someone? You spent all this time getting to know who they are, or at least who they show you. And then one day, they open another door to themself...and another...and another, and while it's great you still wonder about the door in the past that they refuse to open. That hides their pandora's box, and at some point life (As it always does) gives you a peak into that box behind the door and....this person is tainted. not, destroyed, but askewed from what they portray. You find out that they aren't on the same moral field as you....yet they have part of you. You opened up...you were vulnerable, on purpose.

The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak...and maybe that caused you to love them. It definitely confuses things. So you're fighting with yourself. They say some great things, show more of "themself" but then...they tell you more, and something about it reminds you of a line you've heard somewhere before. From another being....who you never thought they would be similar to. And the more you're around them, the more you love them. And then jealousy comes and....you're...falling? Actually falling? Again? What's wrong with you?!

Everything in you is screaming to stop and the more you try to, the more you want to just open up, the harder it becomes, and the burden gets heavier with every breath, and every step, and every moment you're in their presence....what do you do? Cry...what does it solve? And you're too scared to talk...so what...do you do?

You sit with your thoughts...write poems, sing, stare, give yourself, and pray for God to intervene because you have no clue how to change it.

You ever come to the realization that you're in love with someone after all the heartbreak and headache and stress you've been through, and you know it's a waste of time.....no? Me either...