Exit Music for a film

You'll know the feeling.  It's dark.  The score swells.  The protagonist stands, then slumps, battered, bruised and changed, but still desperate.  Maybe, there is still hope?   Then he turns and recognises the hope walking back towards him, alive.  Still alive.  The score swells again.  Piano.  ALWAYS a flippin' piano, as the text rolls up the screen. "Directed by…" and you sniff heavily, or unconsciously move your sleeve across the top of your lip.  You will not cry.  But then, the composer makes your oesophagus feel like its constricted by the very breathe that keeps you alive.  Your chest heaves and you fumble for your coat in the dark.  The girl in the seat behind you weeps openly, unconsoled by the concern of the date she did chose, because it was never HER choice of film.  Unfortunately, she will never realise how truly wonderful the man is whose arm she ungratefully pushes away.  HE chose the film.  He took her there and let the film make her feel that way.  That open.  That raw.  With him.  In the dark.  

And all it was, was exit music for a film.  

You'll know the feeling.  You have heard those songs and known they would be perfect as the title rolls.  I discovered one today on the 6.52 pm from London Bridge.  Bat for Lashes' Laura.  It starts with a piano refrain.  I don't know why they left Laura behind, or why her heart was broken, but her arms are draped around someone she loves and she longs for that time dancing on a table like some star from a bygone era.  It's beautifully written and the song has a lovely line about her "name being tattooed on everyone's skin".  Before I came across Laura, it was some Elbow tune, probably Scattered Black and Whites, but then they became huge.  I loved a ballad by REM in 1992 before Everybody Hurts, and they became ubiquitous in a way that just made you feel someone had mugged you and that someone was everyone you knew.  I've been scrolling through Spotify, iTunes, t'internet radio, Utube, Vimeo.  THAT song will be on there one day.  Not some cheesy Christopher Cross thing from when I was thirteen and knew no better, or those soaring strings as Red walks along the beach. I will forever be haunted by Aime Mann's Wise Up (at the start of the third act and before the plague of Frogs in Magnolia).  Maybe, Julia Stone.  Maybe, Laura Groves.  THOSE are the songs I mean.  You'll know the feeling.  The song plays.  And the girl in the seat behind will realise that the song was meant for her, because he chose the film and he knew they would play that song.  And she would hold him close like her life depends upon it, as the titles roll.  At least that's the way it ends in this film.  

And all it would be, would be exit music for a film.