Tuesday was stormy and dark in my flat. All I wanted to do was sit and knit but the TV had no channels. My eyes wandered to my CD tower, standing there, ignored for years. Why don't I listen to music, I thought. Suddenly the CD Camelot jumped at me. Memories came rushing. My friends Carmen, Linda and I would sit on my bed watching the Betamax tape of that movie. We wept rivers of tears, blew our noses on glaciers of tissue. We wept over loves mishandled and lost that we could never really cry over. We wept over stress at work. We wept over everything that ever hurt us. We needed to cry and Camelot was the film that set our tears flowing.
As the music played the movie danced in my mind. Richard Harris played King Arthur walking restlessly over his approaching wedding. He runs into Guenevere, played by Vanessa Redgrave, his future bride, feeling the same anxiety. They fall tenderly in love. He sings, “Don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot for happy ever-aftering that's known as Camelot.” Theirs was a pre-arranged marriage. They were royalty after all.
So they get married and lived happily ever after but realistically only for a while. King Arthur begins to assemble his Knights of the Round Table. In rides Sir Lancelot of France. There seems to be an attraction between him and Guenevere but they spin into denial first. She begins to miss the simple joys of maidenhood. I think she approaches her mid-life crisis. A woman in her 30s tends to go into a tailspin over her life. She begins to flirt with the other Knights and he turns around and goes on knighthood missions. He disappears for around two years.
Guenevere stays with King Arthur. I suspect she gets bored. The marriage has settled both of them. She yearns for what most women want forever – more attention, more affection, actually more romance – but that seems impossible since they have been married more than seven years now. Finally Lancelot returns and when they see each othe, they fall passionately in love. I think they were both in the throes of a super mid-life crisis. He sings If Ever I Would Leave You to her. That song always takes my breath away.
At around the same time Mordred, a grown-up love son of King Arthur from a youthful involvement, shows up and begins to weave intrigue within, affecting the Knights of the Round Table. Lancelot and Guenevere have their first tryst. Mordred walks in on them and all hell breaks loose. Guenevere is accused of treason and according to King Arthur's laws she must be burned at the stake. Arthur returns from a night he has strayed into a forest searching for Merlin and finds himself forced to order Guenevere's burning, even if he doesn't want to do it. He prays that Lancelot come and pick her up.
Lancelot does come and successfully picks her up but King Arthur, being king, is forced to declare war on Lancelot. In the early hours of the morning before the war starts Arthur, looking stressed and dishevelled, is approached by a boy who has come to Camelot aspiring to be one of the Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur takes him aside and sings to him, “Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.” And there this beautiful movie ends.
As the wind roars and lashes at the leaves outside I want to weep once again. Carmen has been dead twenty years, burned in a fire with her whole family. I miss her still. When she died a friend who worked with me said I had desolate eyes. That's how sorry I was over her death. Now I believe I will see her again. Somewhere she stands waiting to welcome me with open arms. Linda has migrated and I miss her too. We had good times together.
I remember I used to tell them I liked the song that Arthur and Guenevere sang when they were trying to solve their problems. What Do the Simple Folk Do? Guenevere sang as she wondered what other people did when they were blue. Arthur tried to cheer her up by saying sometimes they whistle or sing or dance. The two of them try each but fail to lift their spirits. Finally he says, they wonder what the royals do. There was for me much sorrow in that song. It reminded me of times when my relationships were floundering and we were looking for solutions to our unhappiness and failing. Yes, we failed.
I guess that's the story of love. It begins with so much innocent attraction, then beauty, then madness. So much sweet connection, so much ripping sorrow until you have no choice but to accept the pain caused by the tearing and somehow learn how to mend and finally just to remember. Then it occurs to me. There is so much similarity between love and parting. Parting is such sweet sorrow, was it Shakespeare who said that? And loving is such sweet remembered sorrow as well.
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