I attended a revival of “My Fair Lady” a couple months ago. What’s not to love about that musical? “All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air, with one enormous chair, oh wouldn’t it be loverly!” Yes it would. 🙂 And let’s not forget about “Get Me to the Church on Time!” My Dad would play that soundtrack on our stereo over and over again when I was a kid, and those songs got etched into my brain.
There’s one song, admittedly, I hadn’t paid as much attention to: “Show Me”. Eliza opens the song with an angry retort to Freddy: “Words, Words, Words, I’m so sick of words. I get words all day through; First from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do?”. At its core, My Fair Lady is all about words: not just about how they’re spoken, but also the profound meaning they carry.
There’s something else I’ve recently come to appreciate about words: they live on even when we no longer do. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t recall memories of my son. But those memories are just ethereal sounds and images that flutter around in my brain. When I want to be present again with Matt in a more tangible way I read his journal. Matt is alive and present in his journal in a way that simply cannot be re-conjured in thought. How precious those words are; what a special gift he left behind.
Words, words, words. Sometimes it means a lot to write them down.