Orfeu

My dad's never been, well, a groundspring of film recommendations. Sure, he gets to the theater every now and then, and he never quite complains about being less than entertained, but one gets the sense that films aren't exactly his cuppa. A Bulls game on a July evening, or a string quartet at Duke - now you're talking. But he's likely not going to be the guy to tell you that you absolutely, positively have to see the latest Iron Man flick.

And that makes his filmic recommendations, when they do come along, all the more powerful. I remember, for instance, that when he told me that he'd once enjoyed the Brazilian film Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) I quickly found a copy and watched it especially closely. Indeed, indeed: it's a touchingly strong film.

Orpheus, Orfeu: regardless of the rendering of the name, you know the myth. But do we in fact agree on the moral? Orpheus, granted a second chance, looks back at his promised, ascending beloved, violating his agreement with the god of the underworld. From which, perhaps, we learn that we are not to doubt the pledges of gods. Or that we should not desire too much: given love, we must obey limits. Or, if space is a metaphor for time, that perhaps we should concentrate on what is to come, rather than what has been. Or on and on, if one trusts the collective mind of the Web.

There's no need, clearly, to settle on a single version, and in fact films such as Black Orpheus seem to show us that the myth is a wonderfully flexible and adaptable narrative. In thinking about it over the past few days, though, I've begun to believe that I prefer a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive, reading of it. That is, I don't necessarily see the story as insinuating that Orpheus was mistaken in looking back. Rather, one can also see the process as inevitable, and as fated: we always look back, regardless of prohibitions or desires - and the result is always faint, and thin, and dissolute.

Again and again, over the past few months, I've been struck by how little I seem to recall of the first year of parenting. By how many gestures are lost; by the raw fact that Cleo will never be an infant again. Call those losses a first death. And so this blog becomes my deal with Dis: an effort to reconstitute, to give flesh to the lost, to make the dead alive. But I know - and you know, as well, if we're being honest - that even such efforts are temporary. You'll forget these words in an hour or two. I'll forget their theme in a week. The web servers that enable them are fragile, and shockingly temporary, in the larger scheme of things. And so an attempt to reconstitute can only point, all over again, to loss, and to memories.