STOICK'S SHIP

There are probably more pieces of music that can make this grown man cry than I care to admit, but 'Stoick's Ship', by composer John Powell from the 'How To Train Your Dragon 2' soundtrack score, is almost always guaranteed to ensure at bare minimum a lump in my throat and a tear or two from my eye.

I can't even really remember much about the film (which I would have taken my daughter to see when she was younger) but the music has stayed with me ever since I first heard it back in 2014, ten years ago.

It had been a long summer back in '14 and I had gone a bit Jack Torrance ('The Shining') with a dash of Joe Gillis ('Sunset Boulevard'), working for a producer in Los Angeles on a screenplay entitled 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes'. Late nights fuelled by black coffee and Red Bull had rendered me the caffeine equivalent of Tony Montana from 'Scarface' as I tried to write a cross between 'Grand Hotel' and 'Pulp Fiction' set in the Chateau Marmont, that infamous Californian, celebrity hotel in West Hollywood.

At certain times, questioning my sanity and my artistic ability on those hot and sticky August nights, I would send out a confused prayer into the universe and hope to divine some answer to my cosmic plea, all the while playing 'Stoick's Ship'. There was something about the piece with its swelling strings and rousing choir followed by blasting bagpipes that made me believe I could see light at the end of the tunnel. As it happened, I eventually completed the screenplay (optioned, though never made) and returned to some semblance of normality; I put the soundtrack out of my mind, mostly associating it with that crazy time of hysterical creativity.

It did come back to me though, like an old friend, shortly after my father died in June 2022 when I was putting the finishing touches to a memorial compilation (more for my own benefit than anyone else's) and needed to sign off on the process (again, more for my benefit than anyone else's) with a final, finishing track.

Listening to it at that delicate and fragile time, I found an even greater appreciation for the music than I had before, finally remembering that the scene it was scored for was the funeral of Stoick the Vast, Viking father to Hiccup, the quirky protagonist of the film. As was customary according to Viking lore, Stoick's dead body is placed in a funeral ship as his final journey is heralded with a sky filled with fiery arrows shot by an emotional Hiccup and friends.

Identifying with a kid's movie at such a time may seem a childish admission as there are plenty more lofty and erudite cultural and spiritual references to turn to and yet I defy anyone to listen to this piece of music without feeling an ancient stirring of the spirits and perhaps, as I saw it for a brief while back then, a musical seance with the dead.

It may not be Bach, but it sure as hell packs a mighty wallop.