thinking about the nature of tragedy - meaningful tragedy, effective tragedy, not the hollow or the cynical or nihilistic, but the tragedies so achingly human, inevitable and heartbreaking and yet beautiful. how we continue to be drawn to them, to tell them - and the way it provides us a framework, or maybe a small sense of control, over the horrors and griefs of reality. there have been articles recently about the benefits of rewatching things, the comfort of familiarity, of knowing how a story unfolds, but it’s interesting to me how that doesn’t merely apply to “happy” things, but also to sad ones. that we can watch/read/listen to stories where we know the end, or retell them over and over - the young lovers are going to die, the kingdom is going to surrender, the hero is going to fall - and yet we remain captivated by them, oddly cling to them even if the painful edges cut, wait with bated breath hoping that maybe this time, somehow, it will turn out differently. we know it won’t. of course it never does. fate has written it already. we hope anyway. we CARE anyway, which is such a huge, profound thing. the way we’re able to have that incongruous hope despite knowing doom lies ahead, the way we’re able to have depths of empathy and insight despite terrible actions and circumstances. it feels so…integral and illuminating to humanity, somehow. that we tenderly hold the sad stories and say they matter anyway. this is here, and it is mournful, but it has value. like us.
a million pieces have been written on this far more eloquent and keen than my little ramblings here tonight, but it’s what they sing in hadestown.
it’s a sad song, we’re gonna sing it anyway
we uplift the broken and the sorrowful because we want to understand it, we want to find reason threaded through it, we want to know some love might exist underneath it. we excavate the words, we dig up the bones as treasures, relics to not be forgotten, but to be passed down. tell the story anyway. sing the sad song anyway.
why? why do we try in that way? i think a lot of it is because grief and remembrance is so important, so dear, but has an aura of fear and hush around it. we can embrace it more closely in fiction, we can always bring the characters to life again by going back to the beginning. stories never really end. they live over and over.
cause here’s the thing, to know how it ends, and still begin to sing it again, as if it might turn out this time, I learned that from a friend of mine. he could make you see how the world could be in spite of the way that it is.
we try to see all that could be, in spite of the way that it is, take what’s broken, make it whole, let the song in the night begin again in the morning. the love that’s lost is also always blooming from the beginning. the hero’s bravery is always brave. the light of the life in each story is always shining, even after it has been buried, like the stars that shine down on us long after burning out. as if it might turn out this time. and it gives us a reason to tell it again.
