Love Amongst the Sopranos, My Baritones
I gaze deeply into those familiar earthen brown eyes, evenly gazing back at me. These same eyes that, just a few minutes ago, were on the verge of tears in taking in the dramatic 4th season finale of "The Sopranos." Had it not been for my roommate/best friend beside me, or the proud fact that I've only shed tears in 2 movies* (and 1 TV show--which was "Highway to Heaven" at the age of 5--an ironic story**), I would have let go. Because as (SPOILER ALERT) Tony (James Gandolfini) and Carmella (a magnificent Edie Falco) argue and yell at each other about infidelities, pride, and a lack of communication, teetering on the edge of divorce, I'm watching this for the second time, really. Those arguments Tony and Carmella were having might just as well have been what my parents were screaming at each other in Korean, as I, at the innocent age of 6, watched in curiosity... Why are they so mad? Is it because I wouldn't come to dinner right away from playing with my G.I. Joes? Can't they just kiss and be happy? No... that'd be kinda gross... A.J., or Anthony Jr. (Robert "hey, he's got the same name as me!" Iler) asked his parents something along those same lines.
Lines make up the thick black hair crispened into a faux-fauxhawk. The brown eyes drop to study the tan, slightly sculpted body, made even more flattering by the low bathroom lighting everything currently depends on. I take a step back. Those cheekbones; that rounded, triangle of a nose. The scars of body acne. This reflection is wholly accurate... yet could not possibly unearth the emotions or the hurt that is hidden within with a glance in a mirror. What has been shaped by 21 years of reality-bitten life is a person that so often merely needs love.
It's sickeningly sad to see people and families torn apart. It shouldn't happen. Carmella tells Tony as he near-violently forces her backwards over the kitchen that she "doesn't love [him] anymore." Ouch. At least it must have been. Why doesn't she love him anymore? Should that be the basis for dividing a family and forever tarnishing the development of one's children? What could they have done... what could they do to keep that love alive?!
Love, baby, love!
Fortunately, I've been so blessed to know a Father that has always done that and always will despite the lack of length in my body, the slight layer of flub that's always covered my bottom 2 (maybe 4?) abs, or the selfishness that clouds my desire to serve Him. So when I don't feel that love from Him, where does it come from? Where did it ever come from?
Now, Tony Soprano is not a good man. He along with all his cronies are murderers, liars, adulterers, thiefs, cheats, blasphemers, etc. They've done some terrible things. But one of the things this show does so well is humanize these, well, monsters. It brings them to a place of empathy, where you don't want the family of a powerful, violent, selfish mob boss to separate. You want the family to stay together. Every time Tony kisses Carmella, slides his arm around her back and embraces her in a slow sway, or they make passionate unadulterated love, I'm actually joyful.
Ah, love. Love, love. Love is a many splendid thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!
So to see that love fold over and absorb itself, dissipating into selfishness is a tragedy. Selfishness and love--antonymous, no?
I see so much of my father in Tony. Not in the killer mob boss sense... (as far as I know). But his mannerisms, the inadvertent macho demeanor. The beer belly barely concealed by the tanktop. The way he slaps his son in the back of his head as a gesture of affection. How he gets so sentimental and moved by the smallest things--the death of an animal, a movie. Maybe that's why I like this murdering mob boss so much. He's still human, and he's still a father. Hey, we all have our flaws--some arguably worse than others. But this man is this way because he never got what he, like everyone else deserves. Loooove. At least in a proper sense--the kind that our Father shows us. Thus he's unaware of how to show it himself. So how am I so aware of this, when my father, like Tony, never fully understood how to display that? The difference with the Sopranos and the Baritones (that's us--or should I say Bherritone-juh) is that Mr. Baritone left sooner, and for different reasons. Well, okay, this analogy can only go so far, but it's still aligned in the parallel lack of proper love in the families.
I wanted to cry. Suddenly, feelings of abandonment that I never truly realized until fairly recently were resurfacing. Memories of waking up in the black of night, moistened by sweat with tears trickling out of the sides of my narrow brown eyes, hoarsely screaming "appa! appa!" (meaning "dad" in Korean) after a bad dream, came back. For a second, in the here and now, I wanted to relive them. Perhaps feel that release again of the pain of losing something that I shouldn't--that I had a right to. I'm not perfect either, but I sure as heck deserve a nuclear family. Don't we all? So why did God let this happen?
Well, if it didn't, I probably wouldn't know the Love that I do. Had my father not left and my parents not divorced shortly thereafter, my mother probably would not have found Christ and gave her life to Him so wholeheartedly. I probably wouldn't have been influenced the way I had by the church and the people within then, and not done the same as my mother. So would I rather those tear-filled nightmares and know the Love of God, than receive more loving slaps to the back of my head and not know Godly love? Yes. Absolutely, yes. I love my father and wish my parents never separated, but this Love is irreplaceable and unlike any other love. It is a Love that heals and gives us true joy. If my father stuck around, I'm certain that he would not have been able to show me that. God, my dear friends, has a plan. Maybe it doesn't work out the most pain-free way, but when you allow it to work and contribute to it, boy, does it ever work!
Every day, I'm praying that my parents get back together. I've seen and experienced the kind of separation that is depicted in "The Sopranos". Not just through me, of course. The whole world through. And it's just so terrible. What's worse is that likely more than the amount of people in broken homes don't really know Love like Love was intended. My dad does not. I pray every day that he does. He needs it. Perhaps that is the key to my parents' reconciliation. Because my mother has so embraced it, it has paved the road for amends. Much has been built back because of that. Because of the transforming power of Christ and the Holy Spirit. There just needs to be a little more. What's getting in the way? I have no idea. Selfishness, probably. Pride. I think both my parents are too proud to go to another to pick things back up from when they dropped it more a decade and a half ago. It comes with the Korean heritage and it comes with our fallenness
Undoubtedly, I am my father's son. Many of his physical traits have carried over to me--the big eyes, the stalky build, the guttural laughs at stupidly human things. Much of his social and artistic traits are recognizable in me, albeit in different ways. So here I am, looking in the clear reflection of me, thinking about a fictional enactment of a fictional story, and seeing something very nonfiction--that there is something that drives us all. Though "The Sopranos" is a TV show, performed by extremely talented actors, its written by people all the same who understand that no matter how inhumane people may get, we will always all be human. In the mobster world of greed and power, I feel like something over-arches it all without necessarily being evident.
Yep, love.
Love is also acceptance. And, though I can never say I know what it's like to live in the world of underground, organized crime in New Jersey as a storied people such as the Italians, I can infer that what's driving these people to do the things they do is a level of acceptance. They want to be accepted in their power, in their place. They want things that can build themselves up so that, what... so they can love and be loved! It can be a selfish perception of love, but what they seek is Love, after all. Oh how little we know. In this life, we only get a preview of the kind of acceptance and Love we will experience in the afterlife with the Almighty Lord--that is, if we know it already. We are not complete, nor will we be until we're in Heaven, where Love abounds and rules.
It's very late, but when I get in bed, after reading God's Word for a few minutes, I think I'm going to sob silently while my roommate sleeps perpendicular to me. Because it's not that I don't have Love, or that I didn't whilst growing up amidst my parents voices' as bellowing ghosts flying through the hallways into my heavy, dark wooden door. It's because people like Tony Soprano, or my father don't. And they need it so badly. And so I will pray that they may one day (hopefully sooner than later) know it. I will pray that God may use me as a tool in achieving that.
I end with this verse from the well-known "Love" passage from 1 Corinthians13 in the Holy Bible:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Help spread this kind of Love. Please. For all the Sopranos, Baritones, Altos, Basses, Tenors, 2nd Tenors, 3rd Trombonists, yazz flutists, and Parade-floaters out there.
*If you must know, they are Schindler's List and The Truman Show.
**When I was 4 or 5, I was watching TV alone in my sister's room on her little TV--"Highway to Heaven." A sad part came at the end where I think a large black woman was leaving her daughter or something rather. All I remember is the woman in kind of a funeral outfit (not black, though) crying as she left and then Michael Landon awesomely stepping on some bus without a word. I started crying. I was a little crybaby back then, I cried at anything. But this was legit. So when my mom came up to see what was the matter, I was embarrassed that a TV show moved me so, so I told her it was because I missed "appa." Then I realized that that was true, too.
Lines make up the thick black hair crispened into a faux-fauxhawk. The brown eyes drop to study the tan, slightly sculpted body, made even more flattering by the low bathroom lighting everything currently depends on. I take a step back. Those cheekbones; that rounded, triangle of a nose. The scars of body acne. This reflection is wholly accurate... yet could not possibly unearth the emotions or the hurt that is hidden within with a glance in a mirror. What has been shaped by 21 years of reality-bitten life is a person that so often merely needs love.
It's sickeningly sad to see people and families torn apart. It shouldn't happen. Carmella tells Tony as he near-violently forces her backwards over the kitchen that she "doesn't love [him] anymore." Ouch. At least it must have been. Why doesn't she love him anymore? Should that be the basis for dividing a family and forever tarnishing the development of one's children? What could they have done... what could they do to keep that love alive?!
Love, baby, love!
Fortunately, I've been so blessed to know a Father that has always done that and always will despite the lack of length in my body, the slight layer of flub that's always covered my bottom 2 (maybe 4?) abs, or the selfishness that clouds my desire to serve Him. So when I don't feel that love from Him, where does it come from? Where did it ever come from?
Now, Tony Soprano is not a good man. He along with all his cronies are murderers, liars, adulterers, thiefs, cheats, blasphemers, etc. They've done some terrible things. But one of the things this show does so well is humanize these, well, monsters. It brings them to a place of empathy, where you don't want the family of a powerful, violent, selfish mob boss to separate. You want the family to stay together. Every time Tony kisses Carmella, slides his arm around her back and embraces her in a slow sway, or they make passionate unadulterated love, I'm actually joyful.
Ah, love. Love, love. Love is a many splendid thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!
So to see that love fold over and absorb itself, dissipating into selfishness is a tragedy. Selfishness and love--antonymous, no?
I see so much of my father in Tony. Not in the killer mob boss sense... (as far as I know). But his mannerisms, the inadvertent macho demeanor. The beer belly barely concealed by the tanktop. The way he slaps his son in the back of his head as a gesture of affection. How he gets so sentimental and moved by the smallest things--the death of an animal, a movie. Maybe that's why I like this murdering mob boss so much. He's still human, and he's still a father. Hey, we all have our flaws--some arguably worse than others. But this man is this way because he never got what he, like everyone else deserves. Loooove. At least in a proper sense--the kind that our Father shows us. Thus he's unaware of how to show it himself. So how am I so aware of this, when my father, like Tony, never fully understood how to display that? The difference with the Sopranos and the Baritones (that's us--or should I say Bherritone-juh) is that Mr. Baritone left sooner, and for different reasons. Well, okay, this analogy can only go so far, but it's still aligned in the parallel lack of proper love in the families.
I wanted to cry. Suddenly, feelings of abandonment that I never truly realized until fairly recently were resurfacing. Memories of waking up in the black of night, moistened by sweat with tears trickling out of the sides of my narrow brown eyes, hoarsely screaming "appa! appa!" (meaning "dad" in Korean) after a bad dream, came back. For a second, in the here and now, I wanted to relive them. Perhaps feel that release again of the pain of losing something that I shouldn't--that I had a right to. I'm not perfect either, but I sure as heck deserve a nuclear family. Don't we all? So why did God let this happen?
Well, if it didn't, I probably wouldn't know the Love that I do. Had my father not left and my parents not divorced shortly thereafter, my mother probably would not have found Christ and gave her life to Him so wholeheartedly. I probably wouldn't have been influenced the way I had by the church and the people within then, and not done the same as my mother. So would I rather those tear-filled nightmares and know the Love of God, than receive more loving slaps to the back of my head and not know Godly love? Yes. Absolutely, yes. I love my father and wish my parents never separated, but this Love is irreplaceable and unlike any other love. It is a Love that heals and gives us true joy. If my father stuck around, I'm certain that he would not have been able to show me that. God, my dear friends, has a plan. Maybe it doesn't work out the most pain-free way, but when you allow it to work and contribute to it, boy, does it ever work!
Every day, I'm praying that my parents get back together. I've seen and experienced the kind of separation that is depicted in "The Sopranos". Not just through me, of course. The whole world through. And it's just so terrible. What's worse is that likely more than the amount of people in broken homes don't really know Love like Love was intended. My dad does not. I pray every day that he does. He needs it. Perhaps that is the key to my parents' reconciliation. Because my mother has so embraced it, it has paved the road for amends. Much has been built back because of that. Because of the transforming power of Christ and the Holy Spirit. There just needs to be a little more. What's getting in the way? I have no idea. Selfishness, probably. Pride. I think both my parents are too proud to go to another to pick things back up from when they dropped it more a decade and a half ago. It comes with the Korean heritage and it comes with our fallenness
Undoubtedly, I am my father's son. Many of his physical traits have carried over to me--the big eyes, the stalky build, the guttural laughs at stupidly human things. Much of his social and artistic traits are recognizable in me, albeit in different ways. So here I am, looking in the clear reflection of me, thinking about a fictional enactment of a fictional story, and seeing something very nonfiction--that there is something that drives us all. Though "The Sopranos" is a TV show, performed by extremely talented actors, its written by people all the same who understand that no matter how inhumane people may get, we will always all be human. In the mobster world of greed and power, I feel like something over-arches it all without necessarily being evident.
Yep, love.
Love is also acceptance. And, though I can never say I know what it's like to live in the world of underground, organized crime in New Jersey as a storied people such as the Italians, I can infer that what's driving these people to do the things they do is a level of acceptance. They want to be accepted in their power, in their place. They want things that can build themselves up so that, what... so they can love and be loved! It can be a selfish perception of love, but what they seek is Love, after all. Oh how little we know. In this life, we only get a preview of the kind of acceptance and Love we will experience in the afterlife with the Almighty Lord--that is, if we know it already. We are not complete, nor will we be until we're in Heaven, where Love abounds and rules.
It's very late, but when I get in bed, after reading God's Word for a few minutes, I think I'm going to sob silently while my roommate sleeps perpendicular to me. Because it's not that I don't have Love, or that I didn't whilst growing up amidst my parents voices' as bellowing ghosts flying through the hallways into my heavy, dark wooden door. It's because people like Tony Soprano, or my father don't. And they need it so badly. And so I will pray that they may one day (hopefully sooner than later) know it. I will pray that God may use me as a tool in achieving that.
I end with this verse from the well-known "Love" passage from 1 Corinthians13 in the Holy Bible:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Help spread this kind of Love. Please. For all the Sopranos, Baritones, Altos, Basses, Tenors, 2nd Tenors, 3rd Trombonists, yazz flutists, and Parade-floaters out there.
*If you must know, they are Schindler's List and The Truman Show.
**When I was 4 or 5, I was watching TV alone in my sister's room on her little TV--"Highway to Heaven." A sad part came at the end where I think a large black woman was leaving her daughter or something rather. All I remember is the woman in kind of a funeral outfit (not black, though) crying as she left and then Michael Landon awesomely stepping on some bus without a word. I started crying. I was a little crybaby back then, I cried at anything. But this was legit. So when my mom came up to see what was the matter, I was embarrassed that a TV show moved me so, so I told her it was because I missed "appa." Then I realized that that was true, too.