Evanston: no regrets
Evanston: no regrets
I have always misunderstood Edith Piaf’s song, “Non, Je ne Regrette Rien.”
I have thought that for anyone who has lived a while to have no regrets, he or she must be very stupid or very, very, very lucky. I came to recognize my error after watching a very well done bio-pic of Edith Piaf, titled after another of her songs, LA VIE EN ROSE. Certainly Ms. Piaf had many regrets: the death of her lover in an airplane crash, three near fatal automobile crashes, her impoverished childhood and blindness for three years, various addictions, and finally death from liver cancer at age 47.
But when I looked up the lyrics of the song I discovered that they don’t foolishly claim never to have had regrets, but that what went wrong in the past doesn’t matter because of the new love she has found in the present. A very different and laudable attitude.
Directors make movies--at least they do if they can control the product that is finally released, which all too often they can’t. And LA VIE EN ROSE is a prime example. The direction was suburb, original in lighting and angle.
The movie does not follow Edith Piaf’s life sequentially, but in a series of flashbacks from her final years, in which she was said to look 70 even though she was only in her late 40s. As someone who is almost 70, I think she looked even worse.
From what I have subsequently read, the movie depicts her life accurately. One line, which is a real quote, came as her response to being asked if she was afraid of death. She replied, “I am more afraid of being alone.”
Almost half a century ago in a philosophy class a professor was talking about the concept of The Brotherhood of Man, and I asked if this was based on the Fatherhood of God. After a pause, he said that he supposed so.
It seems fairly obvious now that there are too many disparate gods, many of which divide rather than unit humanity. Paif’s line reminded me of one of my own: We are all dying; and most of us are lonely. If there is any brotherhood of man, that is the basis.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008