Steve and I huddled down in our summer white sheets with fan blowing cool sea breeze and watched our movie that came in the mail today. Buena Vista Social Club, the Wen Wenders movie about Cuba.
I hope it isnt some strange obsession I am getting with this beautiful, sad country, but I can't get over the emotion this beautiful movie evoked in us. If you have never seen it you can purchase it online. You will probably want to keep your copy and watch over and over.
The story is so poignant, about the quest to find the old classic musicians of Cuba, before they were forgotten.
The characters are real and the story is the most romantic longing for human connection I have seen in long time. The power these people, who have been shut in time since the fifties, have to survive is tear jerking. The way they have adapted their inner psyche and turned it to harmony and syncopation, the rhythm in body movement of the longings and heartbreak of life. Loss, rejection, longing, passion, unrequited love all at the bench of a beautiful piano, or the neck of a handcrafted string instrument, made in Cuba, but of Spanish ancestry.
I will ruin it for you if I tell you the ending, so just rush and get a copy. Wim Wenders, one of my favorite film makers, uses the moody light, the sky, the beautiful buildings decaying in the tropical salt air, to create what we saw with our own eyes. People who have adapted to an ever shrinking world, by making the most of it.
One beautiful scene of a Santeria Lazarus altar and the Lazarus staff that becomes, mother, father, god to the man who has held it to his heart since the loss of his beloved mother. The beautiful mellow and mournful voices, woven in a sensual, sexy, haunting melody that tells of the dreams we all secretly have to belong, to feel passion, to connect and to express our urges to people who care or will listen.
Well..... all I can say is Viva Cuba, a culture more compelling than words or images could really articulate. It will get into your craw and you won't be able to extricate it. So many people, I read 50 million refugees in the world today. Lost from their moorings, moving across the earth looking for home, a place of their own?
It will make you look in your own heart and imagine these people and all who must leave home or adapt to a home taken from them, not by their own choosing.
Summer musings, Kate and Steve
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