From A New Hope to Rogue One

Last night I went to see Rogue One again, with the man who took me to see A New Hope the first time, the better part of four decades ago.

 

(Also my mom, who may or may not have been there then, and my wife, brother, and sister-in-law, who are all prequel-age.)

 

I’m thankful he shared it with me then, and I’m thankful he shared it with me now. The older we get, the more and more I recognize and value the seeds he planted in me, and the more grateful I am that he’s my dad.

“She Moves On” – Farewell, Carrie Fisher

My iTunes this morning randomly played Paul Simon’s “She Moves On.” I made plans to go with my father to see “Rogue One.”

 

I saw the news about Carrie Fisher on Twitter.

 

The song is one of a handful of Simon’s colored by his brief marriage to Fisher, along with “Hearts and Bones” and “Graceland,” arguably among his best. I’d not realized her connection to “She Moves On” until I went looking to see what of his she’d inspired; when you can’t find words, Paul Simon is a good place to start.

 

And I wanted words better than the easy one. It’s easy to say “RIP Princess Leia,” and, sure, I’ll admit that for a child of the ’70s, that’s a big part of how I process the news. It irks me a little when people reduce a celebrity to their biggest or favorite role. It was Leonard Nimoy, not Spock, who died last year. Spock will outlive Nimoy, and, unlike Nimoy, leaves behind no family and friends to mourn him. But I’d be lying if I denied being sad that, in a way, Leia has died — her story remains unfinished, and, while I hope much the bigger story will continue, there is a best version of it that we’ll now never see.

 

My day starts with a song Carrie Fisher didn’t write, it ends with a movie she didn’t work on; and yet both spring from her indelible mark on the world. She touched my day without even doing anything.

 

It’s a little unfair but also undeniable that, despite being a talented and prolific storyteller, she’ll be remembered most for her part in someone else’s story, but it’s a story that she helped shape into one of the most iconic and resonant of the last century, a modern myth. For that, and for so much more, thank you, Carrie Fisher.

 

“When the road bends

And the song ends

She moves on”