Taps

I only have a purely emotional reaction to share.

When we watched Maya Lin in class on Tuesday I cried. None of the other movies that we have seen so far have produced in me a moment of such intense reaction the way this documentary has. Full Metal Jacket was disturbing, the killing and shooting in Platoon was upsetting, and Hearts and Minds made me cringe and disapprove of an American government I already disapproved of. The images in all these movies were horrifying, all the killing had the appearance of being real, and the fighting was violent and disgusting, but in all their horror, my eyes never watered. All it took in Maya Lin was one scene after Maya spoke to everyone at the Vietnam Memorial. After all the speeches and the ceremony the film shifted shifted to images of people from the crowd approaching Maya and thanking her. After or during that scene (I can't remember the exact point), over the humming of the crowd pierced the anthem of the dead- Taps. And I, I am shot. Taps continues to play and the camera shifts over to a long shot of the black memorial and at the bottom of the screen a tiny American flag propped up against the wall. What really got to me in this scene wasn't so much the seeing- the images were far from shocking or grotesque- instead it was the 3 note lament of a single haunting bugle that made me feel. I could actually feel it resonance in me as the sound came out of the bugle, passed the speakers, and into my ears. 3 notes, 3 notes and one bugle and I've felt more for a moment that I have in an entire semesters worth of watching movies and documentaries on the Vietnam War. That song is no ordinary song. It's not even a song, it's a a lament, a sad, sad, requiem for the dead. It's pain, it is suffering, it's agony, all of it in a single line of music played on one horn. When I heard Taps played in class, I remembered instantly the funeral I went to this summer for my mother's uncle (may he rest in peace) that served in the military during WWII. I never knew the man. I had no emotional attachment, nothing to cry about. I was there to pay my respects as a relative and to support the family. I never knew the man, but 21 rounds and 3 notes later I wept for him. I felt the vibrations of bullets penetrating through the air, the crack of the barrel, the perforating sound of the horn shake my very being. It was like I could feel the presence of death and it gripped onto me and pulled tears and muffled whimpers out of me. It was like I experienced, in a very small but very real way, war, grief, and death. There is something terribly haunting and melancholy about that 3 note melody and when I heard it in class, I relived the sensations of the gun shots, the whizzing bullets, the Taps, the weight of the air heavy with grief.

I'm not done. I'll finish this later.