That Was Then, This Is Now

Season 6, #2: Movies or music—which came first? Let's find out

WHERE, YOU MIGHT WONDER, did the word “Nightwalking” originate?

Oh, that’s easy … at least, I thought so.

For the longest time, I believed it was my own term until I nosed around and found others knew of its magic, too.

Author Bianca Giaever talks about collaborating with writer Terry Tempest Williams on a project that brought them together to record nighttime conversations under a full moon. Williams, Giaever writes, “saw nightwalking as a way to conquer fear, and a powerful metaphor for persevering through the unknown. Nighttime, to her, was a space to continually lose and then find oneself, to cast off grief, to contemplate, and to come face to face with the Divine. When you walk at night, your senses are heightened, and you have no choice but to surrender, fully, to the present.”¹

While I commend the notion of “shared nightwalking,” my version of it is less communal and more on the “personal reflection” side—something akin to praying alone.

And then again, Nightwalking has none of the verbal skills Daytalking happily launches into, or that Stargazing deeply considers. It’s a lumbering beast of being, all crackling dark energy and best dealt with by listening to music or entertaining visions in one’s own mind.²

Sometimes those visions blend with music. Sometimes they don’t and just appear mysteriously, much as would happen when you’re surprised by a sudden flash of light or a distant movement while walking at night.

Which got me thinking: What came first—music or the movies?

That’s also somewhat easy to answer since my late parents loved music (particularly my mother) and it’s likely they soothed me with classical music on the “hi-fi” stereo or by singing lullabys in my crib. I probably didn’t see my first movie until I was at least a toddler, and likely that cinema experience (like many of my generation) was produced by Walt Disney.

So much like the previous newsletter about cars then and now, I thought I’d explore via Nightwalking the past and present of both movies and music, since my experience has been that a great piece of music often inspires scenes that might be used in a movie, or evokes an emotion that only can be expressed in images. And while I was at it, I snagged two Substack friends—Dan Pal and Eric Pan—to get their take, too.

So let’s go exploring.

That Was Then: Music by Ear and at Hand

I’VE GIVEN THIS A lot of thought, especially back when I was writing the Completely in the Dark (CITD) blog on WordPress. It was definitely cradle songs sung by my mother or played on a portable turntable, but later Mom and Dad introduced me to a lot of British Light Music, such as “Puffin’ Billy” (the theme song to a favorite TV show, Captain Kangaroo) and later Tchaikovsky, for classical. Sometimes I’ll hear things and wonder if I first heard it in my crib—Gustav Holst’s The Planets, especially “Jupiter,” does that to me every time.

I was also blessed with parents who bought us musical instruments: Dad had a ukulele he never played, so he gave it to me. Mom somehow got us an upright piano, then later a Wurlitzer organ, then back to piano again. Off I was sent to band (with a used cornet) and later piano lessons at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts, where on November 23, 1975, my instructor Don Standen—a dark-haired 30-year old in black turtleneck, pure Central Casting for an extra in the original Bob Newhart Show—hosted a student recital with over 30 of us young musicians performing.

The Beatles were my choice for piano, although it should be, of course, “The Long and Winding Road” (photo by StoryShed Media).

Once I escaped the orbit of Don Standen’s classroom and recitals, some of the happiest moments of my young life were playing piano freeform in the annex to the arts center—often for hours at a time. Fingers on the keyboard, head down, just listening to whatever came out. That’s making music: not for anyone else but your own heart, alone.

As mentioned in CITD, the Moody Blues were a big influence in those early Nightwalking musical sessions, especially when I discovered their album Days of Future Passed and late night AM radio played “Nights in White Satin.”

So sad, so beautiful.

This Is Now: Silence Will Not Protect You

I DON’T COLLECT MUSIC anymore, in the form of CDs or vinyl record albums. I started buying vinyl over Covid, sort of out of nostalgia-sake, but I’m not interested in owning more things, much less LPs or 45s. I do have a lot stored in digital files, and sometimes will dip into those when I’m feeling the need for a particular artist or style of music.

At the library the other day I ran across a CD of Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach, which I first discovered in junior high school with a study buddy at what was then our local public library. That was a fun memory to hear again.

I own no musical instruments, no keyboards, no guitar, not even a harmonica. One time I because fascinated by the ocarina and thought to buy one, but that’s an itch left unscratched.

Here’s the deal: Would it kill me to relearn the keyboards, take a class and pop for a portable instrument? What about a used acoustic guitar? I used to play bass guitar in high school—would I want to relearn that?

Yours truly with Ibanez bass guitar and choker beads in the late 1970s (photo by StoryShed Media).

Heck, I’m sure I could find an ocarina somewhere cheap.

Why not?

That Was Then: Let’s Go to the Movies!

NOTHING SHOOK ME TO the core of my childhood more than watching Sleeping Beauty prick her finger on the spindle in Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty animated film. The scene pacing and ominous shadows of everything leading up to that moment stays with me today.

That’s the beauty of film.

But beyond Disney, the first movie I saw with my family in a movie theater was Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, probably in Indianapolis in 1965 when it was released. What sticks with me about moviegoing was of course the smell of buttered popcorn and the heavy, dark red velvet curtain that used to slowly open when the film started. Going to the movies was a religious experience, no doubt.

Back in the day, I rarely attended a screening alone: if not with an old buddy or girlfriend, sometimes coworker Dave and I took in a show on the weekends. As I got older, I ventured into theaters alone, especially when I couldn’t snag anyone to see a foreign or independent feature, mostly during the late 1980s and most of the 1990s.

Movies are magic. So many moments to escape into (which is probably not the right word, but let’s bookmark that for now) from one’s existence and plunge into something completely foreign. A few stick out: Alexander discovering the glowing mummy, licking his forefinger and placing it in front of the mummy’s nose as it slowly turns its head toward the scent (from Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, 1982), watching David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia or Abel Gance’s Napoleon on the big screen… so much magic passed before my eyes.

For the purposes of Nightwalking, one film from the late 1960s, when I was eight or nine years old, is Robert Freeman’s 1969 film Secret World (in French, La Promesse) starring Jacqueline Bisset and written by Gérard Brach, who later wrote Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring.

Secret World is difficult to find streaming, but available on amazon via DVD. As Wikipedia describes the film’s plot, young “François, withdrawn and fearful of riding in cars as a result of an automobile crash that left him an orphan, lives with his middle-aged aunt and uncle, Florence and Philippe, in a chateau in Provence.” François develops a crush on Wendy, his uncle’s mistress, played by Bisset, who in the end draws the boy out of his shell and back into the world he’s rejected.

François, played by Jean-François Vlerick, who at the time was two years older than I was (photo retrieved from IMDB).

I’ve wondered why this film so moved me as a boy, and could probably take a stab at it now. Perhaps at the time I found the film’s story an object lesson in what it might be like to lose my family and have to find someone new to lean on, someone to reach out to, some way to create a new identity.

Movies used to do that to me.

Maybe to you, too?

This Is Now: Movied Out

THE FACT IS I rarely go out to movies anymore. That’s not to say there aren’t good movies to see. The last I saw in a theater (with one of my oldest friends) was Michael Mann’s Ferrari. We both loved it. He’d recently lost his father and even after many years I was still grieving my parents’ deaths. Ferrari deftly wove together grief, ambition, family rivalry, and community in classic Michael Mann-style.

So, moviegoing isn’t going away any time soon. It’s just taken a hit at the box office.

Why am I “movied out”? Maybe it circles back to why the movies meant something to me in the first place, like music too. Is it too much? What matters to me? Why this and not that?

I’ve had fun moments with music more lately than movies, like listening to Peter McPoland’s “Romeo and Juliet” in a coffee shop and saying to myself, YES, THIS IS GOOD. And then seeking it out. That’s cool. Someone will make a movie out of that and every song written about Romeo and Juliet and they have and they will and that’s…

The future of moviemaking.

As long as I have eyeballs open and eager to see, I’m there.

Dan Pal’s Nightwalking Movie Selection

I ASKED FILMMAKER AND educator Dan Pal this question: Where do you feel movies have lifted you out of a dark moment?

Dan’s movie choice is Billy Wilder’s 1960 film The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray.

He writes:

This film has been in my Top Ten for decades. I really liked it from a young age but it became particularly resonant to me when I was in my 20s.  I was struggling in those post-college years and at one point took my first and only corporate job. Like Lemmon’s character, C.C. Baxter, I’d come home to my small apartment, eat whatever I had, and watch TV. Baxter was trying to move up the corporate ladder and did whatever his superiors asked of him, including letting them use his apartment for their various trysts. While I never did that, I did feel I was beginning to compromise myself to do well in the job, such as work the day after Thanksgiving and feign interest in an office party where key corporate clients were attending. 

There’s a moment in The Apartment when Baxter decides to stop compromising his own ethics and values and quits his job. My moment came when my supervisor asked me to do something I wasn’t comfortable with and said, “Dan, sometimes you just have to put on a mask and do it.” That didn’t sit well with me and two months later I was fired. At the end of The Apartment, Baxter has to decide what he will do next with his life. The day after I was fired my friends Pat and Sue took me out for pizza and reminded me about my passion for all things media-related. Baxter’s strength of character was really inspiring to me. He stood up for what he believed in and went after what he wanted (in the character of Shirley MacLaine). I went after a whole new career that ultimately led me to where I am today. I haven’t felt the need to compromise since that job.

Dan Pal helms PalCinema on Substack (Photo courtesy of Dan Pal).

Eric Pan’s Nightwalking Music Selection

ERIC PAN IS A musician and artist splitting his time between Berlin and New York. “I fell in love with music,” he writes via Chat, “early on. After asking my mom for a piano and getting one, I remember staying up late to figure out The Legend of Zelda main theme by ear,³ and improvising not-without-swagger ‘the 2nd Movement of Chopsticks’ in front of [my] class. I lost interest later, but that’s another story… :)”

I asked Eric if he had dark moments that music lifted him out of.

“Throughout life,” he responded, “dark moments have always seemed like difficult circumstances to create: I usually lack motivation to make music. But listening is another story … I think music is most powerful when sad, and through sadness can grow catharsis, even transformation to the sublime. I would say putting on a beloved record when life feels bleak represents one of the most transcendent possibilities for magic.”

Eric Pan shares words, music, video, and photos at Campfire Sparks! (Photo courtesy Eric Pan’s personal website.)

I particularly love Eric’s statement that “through sadness can grow catharsis, even transformation to the sublime” and Dan’s realization that a movie character (Lemmon’s C.C. Baxter) could inspire his own motivation to change career direction.

Absolutely inspiring and I’m grateful to both of them for playing along.

I love you all and grateful for you being here, so NOW—

When Was Your Then, and What Is Your Now?

It’s your turn…

• Where do you feel movies have lifted you out of a dark moment?

• What are some dark moments that music has lifted you out of?

• Do you currently play a musical instrument? Have you ever stopped and restarted playing it?

• Has music or film ever inspired you to change careers, end relationships, start families or any other life milestones? Tell us in the comments!

Extra texture and notes

“Nights in White Satin,” The Moody Blues (1967)

1. “On the Rich and Radical History of Nightwalking” by Bianca Giaever (retrieved from Literary Hub website).

2. “Nightwalking” by Michael Maupin (retrieved from Completely in the Dark, WordPress).

3. Buy an ocarina and learn “The Legend of Zelda”!