The Works of Nick Hayden

Went for a walk today.

It wasn’t an ordinary walk. My car’s in the shop and Natasha was in the middle of making dinner and couldn’t pick me up, so I decided to walk home from work. It’s something like two miles.

Today was cool and cloudy. I’d been restless all afternoon with a desire to make something, do something, create something–the sort of restlessness that can’t really be satisfied because the desire is not for a thing but for an idea. I made my way briskly along US 6, eventually coming to where the old factory’s been taken down across from Scott’s. Dad told me there’s a cemetery behind it, and you can see it now from the road that curves around. I decided to visit it.

It’s a strange place for a cemetery, amid all the old industrial buildings on that side of town. Past the chain across the entrance is thick green grass and old, weathered gravestones. Many of them you can’t read, but the ones you can bear dates from the mid-1800s. It’s an odd, peaceful place beneath a gray sky and I wandered about, trying to read the words with my fingers when they were too worn away for my eyes.

But I had to continue on. Supper would be ready soon. I started up Main Street, looking at the houses, imagining the pictures I might take if I had a camera and some skill with it. Not large, panoramic shots, but close-ups and slivers to isolate this shape or that form. The problem with being a fiction writer is that you work in plot and sometimes there’s beauty in stillness, not in the movement. I’m not quite a poet; I can’t quite sell the solitary moment.

I crossed the train tracks into downtown. In a small town, there are so many nooks and crannies of history you don’t notice. As I kid I biked full speed from one end of town to the next. Now I drive. When I walk, it’s with the dog or with the kids, to get a coffee or rent a movie or visit a park. Not this rambling through blocks, gazing back and forth, up windows and down steps. The mural on the first-block building says the city was established in 1863. Some of the graves in the cemetery dated earlier than that.

It occurred to me as I turned to pass my church that it would be interesting to stop by houses, randomly, and record the stories of those who lived there. (I like the idea more than I’d like the work of it.) My experiences are limited; what breadth there would be if I could walk, for a time, in another’s shoes. For instance, I saw men working on the train track as I crossed. What is that like? I’m not interested in the big, earth-shattering tales, but in the everyday lives.

I remembered, then, an idea I had when I thought I’d do more in film, little minute-long vignettes of a day in an ordinary life. Things like washing dishes, the growing pile, the drain being plugged, the water streaming in, the bubbles rising. Then the rag across the plates, into the cups, along the knives, each piece placed in the rack to dry, and just as you’re drying your hands, as you look at the empty space where the pile was but is now gone, your wife drops in a last cup with a secret smile. One more, honey.

I approach my house. The dog starts barking, the kids start screaming–Daddy’s home. Dinner is nearly done, there’s a creation to see in the living room, words are tumbling out of my kids’ mouth so fast they can’t finish a sentence.

I’m home.

I’ll have my car back soon. It’s efficient. I get home sooner; I can stay longer in the morning. But speed often diminishes depth. The slow way has its own advantages.

So, yeah, I walked home today.

I finally had a chance to watch The Wind Rises, the last film by famed animation director Hayao Miyazaki, His films are always filled with beauty, wonder, and a desire for simplicity, and they are considered masterpieces of animation for good reason.

What I didn’t expect going into this final film was how grounded it was. Normally, Miyazaki’s films deal in fantastical worlds, sometimes with spirits and monsters, other times with magnificent flying contraptions and imaginative surroundings. The Wind Rises, however, takes place in pre-war Japan and follows the life of Jiro, a near-sighted aircraft engineer based on a real-life man who longed to create beautiful planes.

I fell in love with his movie.

First, it’s beautiful. Though the story probably could have been told in film, I doubt film could have conveyed the beauty of Miyazaki’s animation. By the end of the opening scene, which shows a young Jiro flying over the countryside, I was hooked. (And, yes, I’ve always been in love with Miyazaki’s style.)

More than that, though, is the movie’s theme. Beneath the gorgeous scenes of flying and early 20th century Japan is the looming threat of destruction–first, in the form of an earthquake, then in economic depression, then in the approach of World War II and sickness. Despite these events, Jiro is relentless in his pursuit of building a beautiful aircraft, The experience of watching the movie itself is an illustration of its theme, which is summarized in the opening quote: “The wind rises!… We must try to live!”

The wind rises–trouble and war and death come–but we must try to live. And trying to live does not mean passive acceptance but pursuit of the beauty one can add to the world. That’s what impressed me most, I think. Beauty is necessary for life, and this film upholds its worth, even as it could easily be overwhelmed by darkness.

I’m communicating poorly the impression the movie left on me. It is more an experience than words on a page can quite communicate. To some, the movie may come off existential–live in the moment, not caring about the consequences. But that’s not what it said to me.

To me, it says: create beautiful things, even if they fail, even if they’re co-opted and distorted, even if they’re short-lived and doomed. It’s worth it. And as a Christian artist, who believes that beauty reflects God and that beauty can be as powerful as truth in revealing him; as someone who believes that “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things,” a movie that not only revels in the working out of beauty in real life, but embodies it in its form, is something very good indeed.