Cash and Conscience

Walk the Line
(An unassuming commentary on the movie by a woman who hardly expected to be this moved by it)

Had a friend not suggested this movie to me and lent me his DVD, I would have missed this blessing. Walk the Line touched me profoundly. It’s a rarity for movies to have this effect on me and I reckon it has a lot to do with where you’re at in your life, like Fight Club did with me during my “rebellion years”.

Johnny Cash’s name was distantly familiar to me and since I’m not a country music fan (although Cash did dabble with various music genres), I would hardly have paid much attention to his music. Ironically, I frequently heard Nine Inch Nails'"Hurt" with no idea that he'd covered this song. It’s not as much his work that’s stirred me as his complex character and melancholic moods, his faith, his battle with addiction and his absolute adoration of someone he couldn’t have for many years.

In many ways, Cash reminds me of my biological father. Someone I never knew and,in retrospect, am glad I never met. An alcoholic, drug-addicted adulterer, my father strayed back and forth between God and the devil, much like Johnny Cash was described as having done. My father broke my mother’s heart and his death is still hardly discussed in my family. Apparently as a result of a heart attack, but there were definitely alcoholic and drug influences in that mix. He passed away the night before he was to be committed to a facility that dealt with mental instability issues, according to my mother.

That’s just one level where I relate to Cash and the people in his life. His addiction is another. I watched Joaquin Phoenix portray the emotional instability and frustration Cash experienced regarding June Carter, the woman he was smitten with from the moment he met her. I was drawn to him immediately because I’ve been there. I fell in love with a drug addict the moment I met him and spent almost a decade of my life fluctuating between varying conditions of a shattered heart, sheer frustration with his bad choices and my own drug addiction, with an overriding state of longing for him to commit to me. Years later I thank God he never did. I would have been divorced without a doubt. Friends tell me to this day I was nothing short of obsessed with him. The truth was I felt weak and alone and he felt like my rock. Now I look at him and wonder at the power of God that stopped me going completely off the rails with that man. People we know still describe us as having been inseparable back then. When he was drunk enough he called me his “picket fences” girl. I believed him.

Although June Carter was no drug addict, I get what Johnny felt. He couldn’t have her. She pushed him away. Then she drew him back. And had to reject him again. The man I was convinced I would marry and whose children I would bear did the same to me. His own pending issues poisoned his decisions and distanced his affections. He missed it. I lost it. And had to leave. June Carter was trying to be sensible, but Cash couldn’t deal with it, either. He resorted to his “painkillers”. So did I. Watching Phoenix sweat through withdrawal and the misery and panic associated with your anguish numbing substance suddenly being absent dredged up some dark memories for me.

Then there were Johnny’s black times. He seems to me the ultimate melancholic. The proverbial poster boy for the lingering dark night of the soul. He was described as being haunted. Mixed up. Anti-authority. Mostly typical of the creative soul. Functional and focused, yet disquieted and brooding. His musical outlet for his battle with rejection, frustrations, hurts, haunts, faith, maddening thoughts, conflicts and pain moved me as I reflected on my own erstwhile creative outpourings. Mostly graphic, sometimes in the form of disturbing tattoos and dark designs, which softened over the years as I did.

Lastly, his faith. Torn between the darkness and the delight. Publicly. As my previous article would indicate, I can absolutely empathize with Johnny on the continued conflict between flesh and faith. It had a radical influence on his music and his relationships and he battled the riots of his flesh while clutching at the steadfastness he had been familiar with since boyhood. Christ. Though not always apparent and seemingly disguised by his dark clothing and unstable conduct, his covenant with God couldn't be broken and is, without question, the reason he remained on this earth for the time he did, despite his attempts to embrace death before his time was up.

I watched with tears in my eyes as his sister described his reply to her question to him a week before his death. She asked him if he were walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and Jesus approached him, what did he think He would say to him? And Johnny answered immediately, eyes swelling with tears, “Oh, that’s easy, baby. He would say to me, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” That's what He would say to me." (Matthew 11v28-30)
One of my favourite verses of God’s Word.

I love that generation of men who were called “men of God” even though they failed dismally, often, as we all do. They are dying out now, actually, those icons of faith born in the 30’s and 40’s. My stepfather seems to be one of the last who I can still speak to where integrity and conviction of faith, hope, honour and truth are still apparent in his voice when he talks to me and others about Jesus Christ. Like Billy Graham does. And David Wilkerson. I had no idea that Johnny Cash performed at some of Billy Graham’s gatherings. What an unexpectedly pleasant testimony as to where his heart was.

A profound man with surprising facets and influences whose life has touched my own in a remarkable and almost serendipitous fashion through this movie, I look forward to meeting Mr Cash someday.