Headline, April26, 2013

'''CRYING AS A LIFESTYLE CHOICE'''

Does Nature cry? A good question. And the answer is I don't think so!!

But tell me, does Nature know how chilly we are?!! Break the Ice, and you get to the cold water beneath!

I and Many many people love crying. But it's sentimental movies, rather than real- life Traumas-  that move all of us to tears. So,  -by the way- should we all feel ashamed?

As you grow older, writes one super observer,   melancholy becomes something of a pleasure. I've noticed that at the western memorial services, -the middle class way of death- the combination of nice music, slides of the deceased and poetry readings  -creates a kind of luxuriant, delicious melancholy in the room that assembled mourners really enjoy giving themselves up to.While in this part of the world, Death and mourning are tedious affairs.

I'm not sure, though, that this is real crying; no more than real crying at films. It's crying as a lifestyle choice. It's gourmet crying. Real pain, real, terrible sadness, I think, invokes two responses: one is a different type of crying, where no goosebumps are raised and which is accompanied by floods of snot and unearthly howls and great, shaking waves of despair; and the other is a complete shutdown into mute, bottled up rage, which produces no tears.

Personally, when it comes to real pain, I'm more of a mute, bottled-up nut but with no twist into a clinical depression. Having seen human suffering all my life, and having stood up against criminals, crooks and creeps- I naturally dilate  for the sufferers, the victims, the unfortunate ones, the short changed  Even nowadays, every single day,  -which is why I think I so readily seek out the faux-release of films 

It may also be what actually makes me, and millions and billions of others, cry in films,....but it is not death. Death scenes are what people think makes a weepie, a film with a big old bucket-kick at its heart, such as Love Story or Beaches. But what makes some of us cry could be something else: Hope.

I and they and We, cry at Love stories  -where the lovers can be many different shapes,  -boys and aliens, girls and Frankensteinian monsters, men and women, which end with lovers parting in hope. And Hope, as I said, makes me cry, I think, for two reasons. One could be that I am sentimental old fool. And the other, of course, is because I know that, in truth, there is no hope.

The message of Titanic that Love will go on, is, of course wrong. Especially not after death. That, it seems to me, are what these kinds of films are about: a fantasy that somehow, magically, love will triumph over death. And,  at some level, I'm crying or we are all crying, because we know that to be a lie, and wish and wish and wish, it weren't.

And then there are these masterpieces from India, which get you to cry all the time. And your face isn't just wet with tears. Your face is all awashed with them, wrung out from your eyes by the most divine emotional manipulation. They all burst out a Dam in your heart. As in Mother India. As in Mughal-E-Azam. As in Guide. As in Amar-Akber-Anthony or as I digress, in  ''All Quiet On The Western Front''.

But by what I see happening every day, ''in life's true theater'', all and all around me, all over the world, I have started to love crying. Crying is just so beautiful! Crying is so soulful! Crying is so pure. Crying is like Levitation! Crying is like a spiritual cleansing. And then you look at the foibles and follies of humans, in life, on screen, and in practice, and you wish that crying should last forever.

Crying is just so easier to achieve these days and generally leaves slightly less mess. And if ye must know, then, crying is economical. It is better to cry than fill up with revenge.

One such sufferer, watched Paul Watson's documentary about a marriage riven by Alzheimer's, called Malcolm And Barbara. This was not a Hollywood film; it was not love shot through a Vaseline smeared lens. It was like watching love slowly being starved to death. But yet at the end of the film, when Barbara talked about her husband  -now gone but, in reality, a long time dead   -you could see that she still loved him.

He then realised , suddenly, that assuming love can't possibly carry on after death is its own type of teenage sneering. 

Syrupy Sentimentalism?? No doubt designed to provoke in a less discerning viewer.

But then, tell me, what is that you were telling me about these Drone Strikes?!!

So, so, I am not ashamed of crying and neither should anyone else be! And then I cry and cry and cry!

With respectful dedication to All Ye Fools and Mortals!

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless