Saturday, November 10, 2007

Take Two


Your flower is waiting, and your home is near.
The stars that shine on you are shining here.
They'll help you find all that you left behind.
Their silver song is all you need to learn.
Trust your heart and you will soon return.
Far though you roam, starlight will shine you home.
~~The Little Prince.

About a year ago I tried tried tried to read and understand The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I succeeded in the reading part and failed miserably in the understanding part. I just kept saying what? what? huh? the entire time, and by the end I got frustrated and figured I just wasn't meant to understand the greater depth of the story.

I'm trying again.

The Little Prince and I crossed paths again recently courtesy of my iPod shuffle function. It was made into an opera back in 2003, and TinyTuna (she was officially tiny back then) wanted it on the iPod, so on it went. With more songs than sense on my portable Victrola, all sorts of songs take me by surprise, and this was no exception.

What spoke to me initially about this song wasn't the text. In fact, I was having some difficulty grabbing all the words. What spoke to me was the music. Without turning into an embarrassingly super geeky music nerd, let me just say that certain chord progressions, melodic phrases and rhythmic conventions grab my emotional attention and speak to me in a way that nothing else can. I really can't explain it, but if you're ever around me, you can see it when it hits.

So after living with the music for several days, I found the CD so I could get the text. And there it was. Trust your heart and you will soon return ... far though you roam, starlight will shine you home. This is the last track on the CD, and this, I finally understood.

So I had to hunt down the copy that I had practically thrown over my shoulder in disgust last go-round. I found it and brought it back upstairs to the current reading pile. I'm hoping I'll be able to make sense of the entire story from beginning to end. This time I have a little music to aid in the translation. It's my own personal starlight.

Shine me home.

1 comment:

Antoinette said...

My daughter read The Little Prince and loved it. I have to admit I never thought of reading it myself, but after reading your post, I think I will. *And* I will look for the CD - thanks for the suggestion.