Inspiration

For some reason, we tend to have an idealistic view of poverty and what it entitles. Or some of us do. The ambiance of poverty makes a love story all the more fervent. A film wrapped in the trials and turbulences of economic shortages aspiring a greater ending makes one passionate because if someone can do that with said background, then maybe we ourselves can somehow prevail. It’s the poetry of poverty as it blankets musicians, artists, writers in their journey through madness. It’s the idea that no matter the circumstances, there’s certain sweetness to the act of  feeling happiness no matter what. Claudia romanticizes poverty and hard times when she describes her mother’s routing singing:

            If my mother was in a singing mood, then it wasn’t so bad. She would sing about hard times, bad times, and somebody-done-gone-and-left-me times. But her voice was so sweet and her singing-eyes so melty that I found myself longing for those hard times, yearning to be grown without “a thin ti-i-me to my name (27).

            And it’s understandable. Claudia’s life is mixed with unfeelingness, a bland numbness, that she craves some time of passion, whether it be positive or negative.  And this makes me look back on a commencement speech that J.K Rowling did at a Harvard graduation where she said, “Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.” And maybe in this case, Claudia isn’t so  much a fool as much as she is a girl naïve to the hardships in life outside of her own, kind of like all of us. She goes on to say that “Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother’s voice took all of the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, but sweet.” I think about in describing her mom’s beautiful voice, she uses the colors blue and green to describe it. No brown, no black. The fact that Morrison manages to convey the argument and conflict of the story with the sole description of the main character’s mother’s voice, is lovely. In using those adjectives to describe what she deems a beautiful voice, the reader gets the fact that she herself finds blue and green to be beautiful, which points back to the obsession with being white, perfection. Also the fact that the beauty of her voice took out the grief of the lyrics left me thinking. Is that possible? To live something horrible, to liv pain, and yet find a way to make it softer, even a good thing? As for the last line, it follows that same trail of thought, and is enlightening in its own way. Pain is not only endurable, but sweet. That is inspiration at its best.