Remember this song?

Misty Memories

“Moon River, wider than a mile,
I’m crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you’re going, I’m going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There’s such a lot of world to see.
We’re after the same rainbow’s end—
waiting round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.”
Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer
(Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961)

I woke in the dark this morning with Barbara Streisand’s voice singing this song. I lay for a long time trying to remember all the lyrics. Finally, I got up, pulled them up on YouTube and listened to her sing while watching scenes of Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 movie. It has left me with a bit of nostalgia tugging at my heart. So many people have recorded Moon River over the decades; Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, and of course Audrey herself, but Barbara’s soaring velvet pipes are best of all.

Nostalgia, melancholy, longing—certainly the story of Holly Golightly was all that. She lived in her made-up world that for a time captured everyone around her in its magic. In the end, however, it was revealed to be just that—smoke and mirrors and not real at all. It got me to thinking that all nostalgia is probably like that. When we talk about ‘the good old days’ we’re pulling out only the best memories and giving them a little sprinkling of pixie dust to make them shine. If we were to pull up the whole memory, or the whole year and everything it contained, we would find equal parts of ‘good old-bad old’ days. Moon River is an apt metaphor for that wistfulness for the perfect life—that rainbow’s end where the pot of gold awaits.

Here’s the deal—sometimes life feels good. When it does we ought to savor that loveliness. And, sometimes life feels bad. And when it does, we ought to feel what we feel. Being fully alive means feeling the wide range of emotions apportioned to human beings. Blocking sadness also blocks joy; so we end up feeling tepid, lukewarm, and bland. For life to sizzle, we will sometimes have days that fizzle, and vice versa. It’s all good, y’all.

(I’m going to have that darn song in my head all day long! And, now, so will you!)

In the spirit,
Jane