Rebel Fanfare: Star Wars

There’s Rebel Fanfare, Leia’s Theme, Binary Sunset, The Imperial March, or the Death Star Motif, all themes called leitmotifs, “a musical term (though occasionally used in theatre or literature), referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea.”

Pieces of music come in and out of a score to ground the viewer to a particular motif, give it certain connotations.

One day, I’ll hear John Williams’ amazing trumpet blares, the bassoon, french horn, and the piercing flute, and it will not take me to the scenes of Princess Leia conjuring tension in Han Solo. I won’t look back and think ominous Death Star, Boba Fett, or the Forest Moon of Endor.

Though I will think Father and son. I’ll think of what we pass down to the next generation, what the generation after that will do better.

Sometimes I hate Star Wars. It’s my boys’ waking thought. It will never go away.

But I know that with age comes a loneliness, a chance to have the esteem corrected away from the children we worked so hard to raise. One day, I’ll be alone, rocking maybe, working hard in my spirit to live intimately hand-in-hand with Invisible GOD, and then, the thought of it, the sound, will unlatch from the secret recesses of gray matter, and I’ll start humming.

The Star Wars Music.

And I’ll rock and remember. Maybe smile.

They used to run around in their underwear and sit in my lap while I typed. They would wrestle on the couch until someone cried, and then they would do it again two minutes later. They would use their light sabers to wack the neighbor kid across the face for not including all the brothers.

Maybe they’ll come see me wherever I am, and maybe they won’t. But our theme music has already nestled into my bones. You never know when the music will come out, take us back to our themes.

This morning, we all grew horns and butted heads over Star Wars, and I won, put the toys up in a box and declared a week without. Here’s to the leitmotifs of boyhood, how a mother can take away Han Solo, but NEVER the Rebel Fanfare.

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