Things that move you

[Bubbles]

What things really move you?

https://youtu.be/aHJRBpIZm1o

I found that very moving.

Every so often I come across something that brings a lump to my throat.

What moves you?

[floo]

I don't like music so it didn't move me. I can't think of anything which does as I am not particularly sentimental.

[Shaker]

If I had to list all the music that moves me I doubt if the server could cope. Music hits the spot in a way that no other art form can, not to the same extent anyway.
 
That said, the last fifteen minutes or so of The Shawshank Redemption always has me in floods.

[Rhiannon]

A child's hand in mine.

[Sebastian Toe]

Prunes.

[Aruntraveller]

Prunes.

Got to clean the coffee off my keyboard now.

But more seriously "Imitation of Life" a Douglas Sirk film. when Mahalia Jackson starts singing at the funeral I'm gone.

[Brownie]

Seb, that was a hilarious remark  .

Lots of things move me, some music, the written word, drama and film, people especially children but older people too, things they say and expressions on their faces.  I don't think being moved is the same as being sentimental, that's a different - er - sentiment.

[wigginhall]

Insects really get me.  They are so jewel-like, well, some of them.  On our allotment, we have bronze flies, gorgeous and perfect. 

[Rhiannon]

Wild flowers. Love the simplicity and, very often, the fragility.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Rhi,

A child's hand in mine.

Provided presumably there's a child attached to it?

Be a bit macabre otherwise I'd say. 

[Gordon]

Rhi,

Provided presumably there's a child attached to it?

Be a bit macabre otherwise I'd say.

Reminds me of this from the great Tom Lehrer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjPhFSlhOuQ&list=RDkjPhFSlhOuQ

[Brownie]

Wild flowers. Love the simplicity and, very often, the fragility.

I love wild flowers best of all flowers.

[Hope]

News articles like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-36596875

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

What moves me?

The fact that I have been fishing twice this week and only caught one fish!!!!!!!!


Hell my life stinks.



I had to sit there and endure the peace and calm of the waters edge, conversation with fellow anglers and looking out for wildlife.

Contrast that with the lucky bastard kids under five who die each day because of poor water.

http://tinyurl.com/h32qml8

Moderator: long URL replaced.

And those lucky sods who live on the streets and so don't have to pay rent.

http://www.railwaychildren.org.uk/

I really am unlucky to have been born where I am and when I am.

I hope you all feel a lot of sympathy with me.
 

[Gordon]

News articles like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-36596875

On that we are agreed: a heart-warming story.

[SteveH]

Poetry, mostly - this, for example.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare
From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1

[wigginhall]

50 bees this morning on our herb patch.  Bliss.

[SteveH]

And especially this, by Douglas Dunn, one of a series of poems in memory of his wife, who died of cancer in her 30s.

The Kaleidoscope


To climb these stairs again, bearing a tray,
Might be to find you pillowed with your books,
Your inventories listing gowns and frocks
As if preparing for a holiday.
Or, turning from the landing, I might find
My presence watched through your kaleidoscope,
A symmetry of husbands, each redesigned
In lovely forms of foresight, prayer and hope.
I climb these stairs a dozen times a day
And, by the open door, wait, looking in
At where you died. My hands become a tray
Offering me, my flesh, my soul, my skin.
Grief wrongs us so. I stand, and wait, and cry
For the absurd forgiveness, not knowing why.

Douglas Dunn

[SteveH]

And this, by my favourite living poet and the best poet laureate in my lifetime, Carol Ann Duffy:


 

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Carol Ann Duffy

[SteveH]

And this, by John Donne:

A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
   And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
   The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
   To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
   Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
   Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
   Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
   That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
   Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
   As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
   To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
   Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
   Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
   And makes me end where I begun.

[Brownie]

Steve H, you owe me a box of tissues  !

NS, now I know what you meant when you said you'd got your tackle out;  I did wonder.

[john]

Music, poetry, literature, Art, all push my buttons.

But I get terminally sad and very angry sometimes too when I see one of those items on the news showing a small child dying of cancer or some such god given disease or one who has been ill-treated or worse still killed.

[Brownie]

So do I.  I also become very upset watching some drama or crime stories where children are involved.

[SteveH]

Steve H, you owe me a box of tissues  !

Another one by the Bard:


Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!

[SteveH]

Rhi,

Provided presumably there's a child attached to it?

Be a bit macabre otherwise I'd say.

 

Robert Bloch, the horror story writer, was quoted in the blurb on one of his books as saying (quoting from memory) "People think I'm some kind of monster, but I have the heart of a child: I keep it in a jar on my desk".