real, wet tears

I was watching a TV documentary about the rise of bluegrass, blues, honky-tonk et al. when the particular narrator for one segment began to cry. You could tell he didn't want to; he simply couldn't contain himself.

Widows and orphans were allowed to enter the particular gathering in the late 1920's or early 1930's for free and when the money handlers realized an orphan had paid unnecessarily, they attempted to give the money back. The orphan wept. The narrator wept and then said approximately, "he wasn't crying for the money. He was crying for the music. That's the way it's supposed to be."

Real. Wet. Tears.

It was as if I had put my fingers in a light socket and I teared up as well: "the way it's supposed to be." Weeping for the music. Money is small potatoes (even during the Depression times of yore) when compared with the music. Worth weeping for, even for those not brought up to weep on demand, even for those living in a "boys don't cry" time. Magic is priceless and it is worth weeping for.

Nowadays, everyone seems programmed to weep on demand. Politicians, actors, even the Joe Blows up one street and down another. The loss, whatever it is, is just too horrific. Or sort of. Anyway, it seems that every other person on TV knows how to water the flowers ... it's good TV, touching dontcha know. And maybe the horror is tear-worthily horrific. There is so much of it that it's hard not to get numbed-down or dumbed-down or something. Tears no longer have the clout they once possessed. Tears for the seemingly insufferable wounds.

And yet. And yet.

Who weeps for the music? For the way "things are supposed to be?" The loss of money or life is hard. But the life of music and magic, for the bright, bright sun?

My tears, like the narrator's, seemed to catch me off guard.