That Thing They Can't Touch

In praise of small, good things

I think about The Shawshank Redemption quite often.

I think of the stoicism and resilience of Andy Dufresne. I think of how he negotiated to get three beers each for his “coworkers” as they tarred the prison roof. I think of how he refused to show fear to those who abused him, inmates and guards alike. I think of how he quietly whittled away at that cell wall, hidden behind a succession of posters of the starlets of the day, until he finally tunneled his way to freedom.

Yeah. I think about Shawshank a lot.

Mostly, I think of how Andy persistently wrote letters to get Shawshank a library. I think of how he locked that office door and set the phonograph needle on an old LP of The Marriage of Figaro that had just arrived and played a stunning duettino from Mozart’s opera out over the prison yard for all the men to hear. How they stood, silent and stunned at what they were hearing, and how Andy drank in the music. His face displaying not smug satisfaction for tricking the guard and warden, but embracing a beauty he’d thirsted for.

After Andy spent two weeks in solitary confinement, his fellow inmates asked him if it was worth it. “Easiest time I ever did,” he replies, “I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company. That’s the beauty of music. They can’t get that from you, that thing they can’t touch. That’s yours.”

I think about that a lot.

I think about how my heart quickens when I read Rilke and Mary Oliver. How I feel my blood pressure settle when I hear Patti Smith or Pema Chodron speak. I think how Joy Harjo can humble my heart with a handful of words.

I think how Haruki Murakami and David Lynch take me into fantastic worlds where I can’t possibly anticipate what’s next. I think how the Jeffs - Bridges and Goldblum - fill me with a sense of quirky okay-ness.

I think about that a lot.

I think about how deliciously lost I can get inside a Salvador Dali painting. How certain voices - Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Mavis Staples, Lucinda Williams - can put me in a state of temporary transcendence. I think how John Coltrane’s relentless search for purity and divinity - cascading notes pounding on Heaven’s door - inspires my own.

I think about Bob Dylan.

I think about Bob Dylan a lot.

I think about Roberto Clemente’s arm, firing a perfect strike from right field to catch the runner coming home. I think about him volunteering to fly to Nicaragua with a plane full of relief supplies for earthquake victims. I think about that plane going down in the Atlantic and the ocean not being big enough to swallow his memory.

I think of Muhammad Ali, his grace and humanity. Of him standing over Sonny Liston, defiance personified, and trembling with the Olympic torch in his hand, dignity personified.

I think of Joni Mitchell, too weak to stand, but too strong not to sing.

Is any of that enough? What about all of it, the sum total of the artistry and athleticism?

Does that quantify as something resembling hope?

“Hope is a dangerous thing,” warns Red in The Shawshank Redemption when Andy speaks of holding onto the music of Mozart as some idyllic lifeline.

It is that. And I have no answers as to how dangerous it is in uncertain times. But I do think it’s necessary, necessary to summon from whatever resource can earnestly offer it. I can say that personally, poetry, literature, music, art, film, and sport all have served as the oil that keeps that lamp lit. Some days, it glows brightly; on others, the merest of breezes would snuff it out. But that oil, that fuel, remains available and contained in works as deep as any well. They can’t touch that. Nobody can.

To keep finding inspiration, to keep sharing inspiration, is a small, good thing.

I think a lot about small, good things.

Raymond Carver knew about small, good things.

Ray said that life and death matter, and the question of how to behave in this world, to go into the face of everything. Because time is short and the water is rising.

I think about Raymond Carver a lot.

Pete Seeger said he thought the world would be saved by millions of small things.

I think about Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and Andy Dufresne a lot.

They all gave me things that can’t be touched. All of these people did.

Today, that’s enough.

Today, that’s mine.