Sopranos and the Song of the Bird
Episode 68 is called Mayham. That's right Mayham, not Mayhem. Mob spelling typo? Not likely. Anything to do with Christopher's movie idea: Saw meets Godfather 2? Mob guys hamming it up in a movie?
You all know what happened in this episode which finally started to pick up steam after a rather thin first two episodes of season 6. I won't rehash the plot line. What I found interesting was the Ojibwe song tacked on the wall in Tony's hospital room, the ‘Song of the Bird’: "Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while the wind is bearing me across the sky.’”
We don't know who put it there and what the hell does it mean? And what are Ojibwes anyway? Fans of Channel 13 Westerns in the 50s and 60s will probably be more familar with the Indian name Chippewa.
jiblog complains about the way the word was pronounced on the Sopranos. The Ojibwe variation was used by French fur traders and missionaries, whereas Chippewa was how the English and American ear heard the same word.
But what about the note? What does it have to do with Tony and his salesman alter-ego in episode 67?
This comes from Anthony DeMello's book Song of the Bird:
A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eagle hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.
All his life, the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet in the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
The old eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked.
"That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbor. "He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth -- we're chickens." So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he
was.
Tony could have lived a life as in the dream but he lived as a mobster because that was what he thought he was. Or am I reaching here?
Ojibwe References:
Poetry from Astral Wolf Star An Ojibway from Northwestern Ontario
Ojibwa creation story
