Here are the songs that make me cry.
Then there are the books that make me cry. Top of the list is Seven Little Australians. I read it for the first time staying with my grandparents one Christmas. The demonic wailing I let rip as Judy's back is broken and she lies dying in the sunset, surrounded by her brothers and sisters, all except the devoted Pip who runs for help, brought Don Mary and The Fuehrer rushing to my bedside. I got into trouble for being up so late reading a book - you'd think at 27 I could keep my own hours, but there you go - but they were so pleased to see another generation imbued with a love, if somewhat manic, of reading. Now I only have to get a couple of chapters in and the vision of the bravery and tragedy waiting at the other end of the book instantly plunges me into a marvellous, dramatic, weepy maudlin state.
Next down is Ned the Lonely Donkey. My friend Spamelot also loves this story, which she had as a girl on a record, narrated by Bing Crosby. When I'm feeling miserable for no reason, I love to curl up with Ned and cry my heart out.
Then the other night Grumpy came home with a copy of The Faithful Bull by Ernest Hemingway. I'm a big fan of the Hem, and I even named my Dad after him, but I didn't know he wrote kids' books. The Faithful Bull is a wonderful story about a bull - "and his name was not Ferdinand" - who winds up dead. It's a story I would have loved Bloody Ern to read to me as a kid. I would have been howling by the end and maybe his voice would have cracked a little too - though whether from emotion or the need to get away from this screechy child and out to some quiet corner with a Camel Plain is quite another matter.
"Perhaps we should all be faithful."
I'm off now to find a bridge I can fling this useless shell of a body from.
8 comments:
Isn't it wonderful? I must say, it's still mostly songs that do that to me. My cry song att he moment is "Lady what's your name?" by Swanee. Found it on audio casette for 50 cents in an op shop. That's the only track on the albumn that's ever been played. You can tell by the stretchy sounds at the beginning and the end.
Bridal Train, the waifs. Just wait til you get to the bit about "no time for sad goodbyes..."
(and yes I know this is a blog about stories, and not songs, but I am pregnant. And anyway, Quirkie started it.)
The bit in "Clean Straw For Nothing" where financially embattled Australian expats David and Cressida Meredith open a small book mailed to them from Australia by a successful artist friend (probably Russell Drysdale in real life), and dozens of one pound notes hidden between the pages start cascading out.
Also that "Louis the Fly" Song. Poor Louis.
The bit in Woody Allen's "Low Down and Dirty", where Sean Penn realises the woman he'd been treating like a doormat all these years, and who has finally plucked up the gumption to leave him, was the one true love of his life.
As Bart Simpson says of Ralph Quimby, with a pause button, "you can pinpoint the exact moment his heart breaks."
The bit in "Lady in Red" where she's "dancing with me", "cheek to cheek", and where "there's nobody here, "except you and me" and "it's where I wanna be".
SuperFreo? Superfreak more like.
SuperFreo! said...
The bit in "Clean Straw For Nothing" where financially embattled Australian expats David and Cressida Meredith open a small book mailed to them from Australia by a successful artist friend (probably Russell Drysdale in real life), and dozens of one pound notes hidden between the pages start cascading out.
That bit was good. Don't think I teared up but it was good.
I liked My Brother Jack better though.
hazelblackberry said...
SuperFreo? Superfreak more like.
Yep :)
yeah, awright, that bit in that Rick James song,can't quite remember the name, but it goes "she's alright, that woman's alrighht, she's alright by me ..."
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