Why We Cry Hearing the Theme Tune of Schindlers List

It’s the elephant, the huge shadow, the gray bulk of gray in the room, and it’s such a small threadbare room, four bunks deep barely five feet wide. Wood lice are eating a cheap village fiddle, it was discarded in the rush to meet this moment at the end of the tracks; for many the ride ends in open iron doors, but here clapperboard hatchways yawn and close, and those that go out and return shelter no thoughts of steps taken without instruction. The musician in the spotlight could not have known any of this, for her an elephant is beautiful and perfect as it is. yet she cried at the rehearsal when her lips were scratched by these fretful notes. I am watching the video, orchestra and audience; seeing the camera scan faces caught off guard. Everyone is leaning into a memory where violins were once as common as handkerchiefs, rags used to blot and dab at sadness, but this music is a river that will not dry up. Only the bored taxi drivers outside the concert hall happily leave this repository of anguished beauty. For those going home there are prayers and perhaps tears for the tears that did not fall when they should have.