Times Gone By

In which our hero admits weeping brokenly over the sorrows of fictional characters....



Or, perhaps, weeping brokenly over the not so fictional circumstances of coincidentally fictional characters.

The musical 'Les Miserables' is an in depth study in fictional characters facing not so fictional circumstances. I love the musical. It is my favorite large scale dramatic work. I have been listening to it since I was small enough to not understand the lyrics. I knew the songs belonged to the specific characters and had, therefore, developed strong attachments to them before I started to learn that they almost all died tragic deaths....

That was a bit of a shock.

As time has passed, I have not lost these strong connections. I identify with Javert in many ways, but I am relieved by Valjean's version of the story, repentance, forgiveness. The end always makes me cry, the beautiful words accompanied by the triumphant music, in which the characters, having died, have rebelled against death and now live eternally.

Yeah, good stuff, I just teared up.

But more and more recently, I have cried more and more for 'I Dreamed a Dream' and 'On My Own'.
Both, of course, are powerful songs driven by terrible sadness. 'Little Fall of Rain' falls into the category as well, but not quite to same level. Les Miz, on the whole, is a very depressing musical. The only happy aspect, the marriage of Cosette and Marius, is mired in the sorrows surrounding it.

So then, that's the end right? Les Miz is sad, it makes poor pathetic-vocalist-blogger-person cry.
Zee end.

Not quite.

I don't know why I have thought this of late, perhaps my experiences of recent, and not so recent, times have created this ticking time bomb of thought in my head. Whatever it is, I am going to write about it and try to do it the justice it deserves... probably won't happen.

We live, in a time of 'times gone by.' The modern attitude towards women, on the part of both men and women, has chewed up our dreams, mocked our romances, and left us alone with no love, left to the shameful prostitution of fifty shades of black despair. We have been wooed by promises of enjoyment and freedom, license in licentiousness. It has left us bereft, weeping for dreams of times gone by, when men were kind, when the world was a song and the song was exciting. We were wooed by the devil, and he gave us what we wanted, freedom from romance. We gladly sing 'Pretty Ladies' with no sense of disgust or revulsion. It is the standard of the culture.

But then a Man comes, and even though the law stands and tells Him of how often we make excuses, how we are liars, deserving of death within the prison, He reaches out His hand, pulls us out of the ditch, takes us away from the docks. We still die, we are doomed to it, but we do not die in the despair of death, we die, Him at our side, promising us life for us and our children.

But I am speaking of Christ and the Church.

Thanks for reading.