tiny dancer
i listen to the wind,to the wind of my soul
where i'll end up? well, i think only God really knows
i've sat upon the setting sun
but never never never
i never wanted water once
i never never
i listen to my words, but they fall far below
So I found this movie clip today from the director's cut of "Almost Famous." If you haven't seen it, you should. If you have only seen the version released in theaters, find the director's cut. (soapbox: never have i seen a movie more mangled for release). Anyway:
So I remember seeing this movie for the first time in our first little apartment in Spring Arbor. The girls came over (right?) and Chris brought the movie (as usual). I fell so hard for Penny Lane, I thought about her for days. Watching clips from it today was like eating crumbs. It is hard to understand what this scene means all by itself, this scene of her alone, but so aware of being observed. She is free, but she is so tied down. She lives and breathes and knows beauty, but she exists in an unreality she has created. What is real to her is the rose, the torn paper on the floor, the music in her head, her skin, her hair. What hurts is pushed aside into some place that she swears has nothing to do with her. Until it crashes in (as it does) and she can't escape what she has really known all along-- that she is an accessory.
Why is "That Woman" in so many movies, so many books? That trapped beauty, with so much to offer, so much she can see, and yet who is caged. When I met Penny Lane, she reminded me of Satine. Isabel Archer in "Portrait of a Lady." Edna Pontellier in "The Awakening." The anonymous woman in the ancient "Wife's Lament." I find myself weeping not for some created character, but for myself, for you, for the women who, somewhere along the way, lost their ability to dance as they did as little girls. At the end of the movie (SPOILER), when her toes are curled up on the cold tile floor and her beautiful body is folded up in agony, that was when I cried.
where i'll end up? well, i think only God really knows
i've sat upon the setting sun
but never never never
i never wanted water once
i never never
i listen to my words, but they fall far below
So I found this movie clip today from the director's cut of "Almost Famous." If you haven't seen it, you should. If you have only seen the version released in theaters, find the director's cut. (soapbox: never have i seen a movie more mangled for release). Anyway:
So I remember seeing this movie for the first time in our first little apartment in Spring Arbor. The girls came over (right?) and Chris brought the movie (as usual). I fell so hard for Penny Lane, I thought about her for days. Watching clips from it today was like eating crumbs. It is hard to understand what this scene means all by itself, this scene of her alone, but so aware of being observed. She is free, but she is so tied down. She lives and breathes and knows beauty, but she exists in an unreality she has created. What is real to her is the rose, the torn paper on the floor, the music in her head, her skin, her hair. What hurts is pushed aside into some place that she swears has nothing to do with her. Until it crashes in (as it does) and she can't escape what she has really known all along-- that she is an accessory.
Why is "That Woman" in so many movies, so many books? That trapped beauty, with so much to offer, so much she can see, and yet who is caged. When I met Penny Lane, she reminded me of Satine. Isabel Archer in "Portrait of a Lady." Edna Pontellier in "The Awakening." The anonymous woman in the ancient "Wife's Lament." I find myself weeping not for some created character, but for myself, for you, for the women who, somewhere along the way, lost their ability to dance as they did as little girls. At the end of the movie (SPOILER), when her toes are curled up on the cold tile floor and her beautiful body is folded up in agony, that was when I cried.
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