True Confessions - Don't Judge

IC I spent time in my third grade music classes learning to play the recorder. Certainly you remember it: the squeaky whistle-cum-flute your parents were required to purchase for you, praying never to have to hear you play it in the house. Horrendous as it sounded, it was nonetheless quite easy to play; a chance for every child to glean the most basic tenets of reading music and playing music. Those who caught on moved on the the bigger dreams—flutes, trumpets, saxophones—whereas others put the recorder in their junk drawer and just listened to CD’s. I remember almost nothing of these lessons (notwithstanding “Hot Cross Buns” being seared onto my soul like a branding iron), save turning one day to the second-to-last song in our music book. The title of the composition simply read as “Star Wars.” My classmate asked our teacher what Star Wars was. I was glad she did; I was curious as well. Teacher’s simple reply: “You’ve not seen Star Wars? It’s good!”

I didn’t know Star Wars at the time. But in the vein of some Baader-Meinhof moment, I kept hearing about it. Eventually I’d notice VHS copies of the movies at friends’ homes. The following summer my parents finally borrowed the three videocassettes sporting that name. After sitting there a few weeks I went down to the family den, alone, and I watched Star Wars.

And I never stopped watching.

I learned every character name, memorized every line of dialog. I internalized each musical cue, identified every main theme. By the time Christmas rolled around, Star Wars was everywhere in my home. New toys littered the family den. Posters and hand-drawn artwork hung in my bedroom. I was gifted my own VHS copies of the movies, complete with “THX remastering” (not that I actually knew what that meant). The next Easter my basket contained copies of the Star Wars soundtracks. The last time I ever donned a Halloween costume for trick-or-treating, I went as Luke Skywalker. Most parents probably yell at their kids for not doing their chores and watching too much television. My dad yelled at me for not doing my chores and watching too much Star Wars.

In 1977 the movie tapped into a mass desire virtually no other movie had struck before. Kids from that era reminisce about their rewatches entering the double-digits. Were I born twenty, even fifteen years earlier, no doubt I’d have been one of them. Star Wars was my childhood. And then it returned, only a few years later. And it became my adolescence. Now, it is my adulthood. The way things look, it’s likely as well to be my elderhood, my eulogy, and my ghosthood. The sentiment that these movies are “more than mere movies” is a cheap and maudlin one. But for me, it’s also kind of true.

This is my own unique experience with these movies, though I concede my experience is hardly unique. It’s the story of my past yet it is—sadly, you might think—the story of my present. I entered the world after Star Wars began, and Star Wars could well not end before I leave it. You could, I presume, fill up a large nation in the European Union with a population of people sharing my precise experience. I doubt I’m even the only person to have found these movies indirectly, through a childhood recorder rehearsal. The older I get the better I appreciate MeeseeksAndDestroy being a thespian and the queasy truth that these movies, for whom my passion is singular, are more omnipresent that most other popular culture on the planet. While Star Wars is special for me, my love for them is in no way special. Yet for all my ambivalences, my affection fails to waver. I still love these movies, excite to them, feel moved by them. Lines I’ve heard (perhaps literally) over a hundred times still make me chuckle. I could hum Shmi Skywalker’s musical leitmotif right now, from memory, if you asked. There’s an embarrassingly marginal chance my dying thoughts will be not of my family or of my achievements, but of Star Wars. (You say “Rosebud,” I say “Rogue Leader.”) I can live with that.