Fallen

I watched "Once" on DVD Saturday night. This sad and sweet indie movie is a tale of love lost, love unfulfilled, and perhaps, love regained. You may know it for "Falling Slowly",the Academy Award winning song, sung by its leads, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. If you don't know the movie or the song, take a minute,click the link, and listen to "Guy" and "Girl" on YouTube - it will help you understand why I'm a fallen man - totally in love with the movie, the leads and the music.

Sometimes I have such vivid dreams that I wake up so emotionally committed to the dream that I move through the day in a "dream hangover", knowing, rationally, that the emotions are not real, but feeling that they are, that they must be. All Sunday I moved through the waking dreamscape of Dublin in my mind, and knew - just knew - that these were real people, that they were just outside the fame of my vision. I sensed them.

Is there anything more evocative than music? As soon as the movie was ended, as soon as I watched the extra features so I could see more of these extraordinary people, I went to the ITunes store, found the soundtrack, downloaded it and then copied it into my IPod. Now I could hear them, and see them in my mind's eye, while I was at the computer, while I was in the car, and even while I was at the Y, doing penance on the stationary bike. (It's a surprise to those of you who know me that I can be a little intense with things?)

Here's the thing: though "Falling Slowly" is melancholy and wistful and haunting, not all the songs are. In fact, I pedaled furiously to "When Your Mind's Made Up", and especially to "Gold", - I love the way the IPOd lets you hit the back button on the scroll wheel and repeat songs. There are a couple of other songs on the soundtrack that are up tempo, too, and make for good riding and maybe good running.

So, there's the connection, the stretch, between this movie and the general subject of this blog - some of the songs from the soundtrack of "Once" are good workout songs.

But here's my true confession - I wrote about it because I love this movie and I wanted to share it with you. Maybe you will love it too. And that's reason enough.

See you out there.