UKC

There’s a number of things that always bring a lump in my throat, even a tear to the eye. The entry of the alto soloist at the start of 4th movement of Mahler’s Symphony no 2. The death scenes in the ballet Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev of course). Certain moments in certain bits of chamber music, mainly by Schubert and Debussy. Until today I have never been affected so by the written word, but am currently reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and have reached the point where Hamnet dies (no spoiler, we all know) and is being laid out for burial by his mother Agnes. It is one of the most powerful pieces of writing I have ever come across. Even writing this now……

The thought of Trump winning...

I sometimes show pupils footage of Tank Man at Tiananmen Square and it's touch and go whether I make it through without welling up.

The Benedictus from The Armed Man by Karl Jenkins

I can cry at pretty much anything. It doesn't have to be a Puccini aria or a film clip like Almasy carrying the dead Katharine out of the Cave of the Swimmers: even a TV ad can do the trick ( little girl trying to buy a choc bar for her mum.......)

Watching my daughter play lead flute in all movements of Beethoven's 9th. The final movement made my face very wet.

Unexpectedly, a VR game. Moss 2. Best game ever on the planet.

I soften at Juba burying Maximus' carvings of his family in the sand of the Circus Maximus and saying (approximately) 'I will see you again, my friend - but not yet. Not yet'

Whoops! Thought I’ve just been suffering from a rather nasty cold, but have just got a covid positive. Maybe that’s made me abnormally lachrymose.

This Erland Cooper piece worked for me yesterday-

https://youtu.be/Oc9ajfuUL7Q?feature=shared

Finding out I was going to be a Grandparent 8 years ago, which totally knocked me off my feet and  physically made me feel me own Granda's hand on my shoulder as if to say "it's your turn now son", and knowing I was going to use him as a model of how to be a ***ing excellent Granda. (and I'm nailing it big style).  It's impossible to even think of the girls (cos another one came along 4 years ago) now without memories of him flooding back.  They're completely interwoven in my head.  He's been gone 30 years now but they keep him alive.

And yeah, I'm off again just thinking about them all.

Edited now I've pulled myself together.  I got sent a voice note last week of the youngest one singing a bedtime song as she was drifting off to sleep, and it just happened to be the same lullaby that my mam used to sing to me when she was putting me down.  Instant floods of tears.  Those kids are pretty much turning me into a husk.  I'm off again

Being in the presence of onions being denuded can bring a tear to my eye.

That reminds me - does anyone know why, when wearing contact lens, chopping up onions doesn’t make me weep?

The dead boy on the beach in Turkey. I saw the (journalistically superb) photo on the front page of a broadsheet in Victoria train station, and started sobbing in the middle of the rush hour.

Listening to A Rainy Night in Georgia, Wichita Lineman and Wild World at full volume will also set me off.

You have to assume that the lens covers the part of the eye that is effected by the onion vapour. 
Though I always thought that it was more the whites of the eyes that got irratated by chemicals, etc. 
No doubt some clever person will explain in due course, as this is UKC and the font of all knowledge... 

I have, many times.

no spoiler, we all know

I had no idea, but no worries. 

It is one of the most powerful pieces of writing I have ever come across.

Do you know the work of Alan Garner? I love his writing, my favourite is probably his novel Thursbitch, the last few pages had me laughing while tears ran down my face.

A quick Google reveals that it is the Cornea that is effected by onion vapours and that the Cornea is covered by a contact lens. 

When I was a small child at junior school, the headmistress read us a story in episodes, and the culmination was a battle between the forces of good and evil on top of a hill, the dark forces heralded by the approach of an ominous cloud which took on the form of a giant wolf's head with gaping maw. 

That image stayed with me over the years though i had forgotten the other details. 

Then when I was studying for a teaching certificate , an assignment about children's literature meant that the story resurfaced again: the hill was Shutlingslow, the writer Alan Garner and the story "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen".

In later years I would find that kids actually preferred his" Elidor" ( it does feature a unicorn , after all) but for me, looking south from the fields I used to play in towards the Western fringes of the Peak, it's difficult to see that distant cone shaped hill without scanning the sky for any odd-shaped clouds approaching, and 'The Weirdstone" will always be my favourite of his works.

Probably because the onion juice isn’t contacting as much of the surface of your eye as when it’s naked.  I find the same.

Was privileged to be at the premiere of his latest album (the one he buried up Brinkie’s Brae) last summer at St Magnus Cathedral.

At one point he asked the audience to take out their phones, go to his website and play a track.  It was a recording of birdsong.  Sounded like the cathedral was filled with hundreds of song birds.  Magical.

2 books have brought out tears:

Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky when the main character (a cyborg dog previously ordered to commit war crimes by his master) explains what he did to a war crimes tribunal and then finishes with "I did what master said, am I a good dog?". 

Time travellers wife with the miscarriages got quite emotional too (although the whole book invokes some complex and confused emotions because of the timeline of the relationship).

Watership Down final few scenes gets me every time.  

The music doesn't help.

That's interesting. I read Hamnet last year on a couple of strong recommendations but found it  disappointing. The writing just didn't work for me and I have no recollection of that scene. 

I think the most weepy book I have read is Unless by Carol Shields (three times in a bit over 200 pages). A miraculous book. I last read it nearly 20 years ago but can still feel some passages almost physically.

Too many of Bob Mould's and Neil Young's song lyrics to quote here

I can’t offer any particular expertise but I do know from experience that scratching a cornea is some magnitudes more painful than scratching the white of an eye. I guess that there are many more nerve endings there. A bit of evolutionary engineering there to make us take care of our eyes. 

My school enjoyed good links with Polesworth Abbey, a gorgeous 12th century church in the  centre of the village. Every Christmas we'd put on a concert there which was very popular with the community. A regular feature would be a small group of kids singing unaccompanied the lovely In The Bleak Midwinter. Their young voices rising and echoing around the ancient stone always brought a decent-sized lump to my throat.

The genocide of the Palestinian people.

It makes me weep again and again and again and again and again.

Opening chords of Watcher of The Skies

A few years back, I read the Lord of the Rings out to my elder daughter. It took several months. Eventually i got towards the end, where Frodo, too damaged by his experiences, leaves for the Undying Lands. I suddenly found myself unable to speak, with tears flowing, and my daughter asking me what was wrong. The combination of seeing a character I’d spent so long in the company of unable to recover from their wounds and left in unbearable torment, and realising that there was no place left in the world for them, and knowing this was written from Tolkien’s direct personal experience of seeing people irretrievably scarred by their time on the Western Front, was overwhelming.

I think reading it aloud to someone else made a difference, as I had read it to myself on a number of occasions without anything close to that reaction. 

The most recent time it happened was watching Pixar’s “Coco”. Maybe with themes of dementia and death, I should have expected it; but I still found myself welling up at the end. A remarkable piece of film making.

A sad dog film, no matter how mawkish. Marley and Me slays me. 

It was my introduction to his writing, as a child, and I loved it. Still do, I've re-read it a few times most recently about 5 years ago, when I passed it on to my son. His work for adults is also fantastic, including Boneland, the conclusion to the Alderley Edge trilogy. The Stone Book Quartet is another cracker, but from what I've read so far, Thursbitch is my favourite. In my top 10 novels list.

Which is why I'm never going to watch it!!!

It's great to see Alan Garner getting so much recognition in this thread. As others have said, he's a superb writer for both children and adults, as rooted in his own landscape as Nan Shepherd. I enjoyed teaching his The Owl Service as a young English teacher. However, the book I taught that would most reliably reduce hulking and hormonal teenagers to surreptitious blinking and rubbing of watery eyes was Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men - the ending of course.

Reflecting a bit more on my English teaching days, I think the experience that both students and staff found most profoundly moving was a Sixth Form tour of the World War 1 battlefields, when we taught the poetry of Owen, Sassoon and others at A-level. I remember us all standing quietly on the site of the trenches where a Pals company waited before going over the top to be almost completely wiped out,  while someone read Anthem for Doomed Youth. Perhaps an even more intense moment was the Last Post at the Menin Gate..."the pity of war".

As an aside, I'm not a particular fan of museums, but I found the WW1 museum at Ypres deeply affecting. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area.

This puts me in mind of a visit some years back to the ruins of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, near Limoges. In 1945 (I think) the retreating German army decided to punish the village for their resistance and murdered anyone they could find, which was all but a tiny handful of the 500 inhabitants. Of course, the Germans burned everything as they left. The village was left untouched (unlike those who visit today) and remains a memorial. 

Coming off antidepressants 

Bolts on the Old Man of Hoy😭

On that theme, the ending to the Futurama episode Jurassic Bark, absolutely heartbreaking 

Of Mice and Men certainly did it for me. My daughter did it in school a couple of years ago, I was a little disappointed when she said she didn't cry.

A few years previously I was reading Charlotte's Web to her, my mum was under palliative care at the time. I got to that bit... and I couldn't breathe. "Daddy, why have you stopped? Carry on!" 

I re-read Cry, the beloved country (Alan Paton) recently for the first time in decades and found it overwhelmingly moving.
I melt for the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and Beethoven's Romance no.2.   
Just an old Romantic softie, getting more so with age.

Visited the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg a few years ago, one of the exhibitions included children's drawings on scraps of brown paper from the Thereisenstadt concentration camp, which was portrayed to the world, by the Nazis, as a resettlement and education centre,  rather than the death camp it actually was. I had to walk away in tears to try and comprehend how such a thing could arise.

Unfortunately recent history gives me little comfort in this regard.

The museum in Hiroshima is very well done in this regard - never expected to be upset by a child’s tricycle.

When someone shows me kindness when I'm feeling vulnerable.

I’m not surprised. The single thing I found most overwhelming at Oradour-sur-Glane (see above) was a rusty and damaged child’s push chair standing in the ruins of the burnt out church.

A dish of potatoes cooked in herby, garlicky stock whihc I had  in Greece a few years ago. Really good food does that to me! 

This tricycle was buried with a boy, about my son’s age when I visited, who died of radiation poisoning. His father buried it with him.

The last thing that came completely out of left field to do this was the singing of Abide With Me at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.  One moment I was watching, a few moments later on I was searching for the tissues.

Music can just bypass all the rational processes and kick you straight in the emotional goolies.

T.

I used to sing Bach's St Matthew passion every year as a cathedral chorister, in English. Nowadays I find that just starting to sing it in my vehicle, with or without the radio playing it (even in the usual German), especially the chorus at the end, "In tears of grief".

I often find that I have the early signs of tears with different works when at the proms in the arena, sometimes unanticipated. I think that the crush of other people around me adds to the emotion, possibly in a shared approach to the music. I'll have to remember which music especially affects me.

One piece is the violin music in Schindler's list by John Williams.

The opening scenes to the Disney animation Up! Cheesey as it is, these make me weep by the end, there are little bits that are very close to home and make me cry silent tears (even thinking about it now I'm tearing up (what a sap), my kids have banned me from watching it.

Less weep, more it makes me anxious to the extent that I go look for my kids to see if they are OK, the film version of The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

Of course, it's possible to be moved to tears by natural beauty as well as that created by art. I'll always remember a young mate of mine tearing up at the top of Half Dome, in Yosemite. We'd done the sublime Snake Dyke with another good friend as a three, which gave us all plenty of time to take in the majesty of our surroundings while chatting on the belays, and huddling against the granite to suck up its warmth in a nagging cool breeze. We finally arrived on the summit and gazed around at the whole of the valley and the backcountry spread out around us. A line of small clouds encircled the top like a diadem. It was one of the great moments of his young climbing life and it was marvellous to be there to share it with him.

Once or twice tears of relief at the top of an alpine route. Not going to die and so on.

When I think back to the few times I've escaped from being seriously scared, my relief always seems to have expressed itself in repetitive cursing. I can see myself now, lying on some ledge, shaking my head and muttering to myself.

Songs of a Wayfarer for me

When I was on the top I watched a bloke wander over to the edge to look down. While he was doing that, a big marmot rifled his bag and stole his lunch. I think he might have teared up.

The Road as a book is probably the only novel that's had me tearing up. I hear there's a new graphic novel adaptation - not sure if I want to put myself through that. There was a time when I never cried at a movie, but I think that started to change with Brassed Off, when Stephen Tompkinson had to run down the road in clown shoes to try and stop bailiffs taking all his family's possessions. These days, as someone said upstream, I don't just cry at films but at the adverts too. Also any Antiques Roadshow story about war medals. I can feel myself going just typing the words!

The end of reading 'A Prayer for Owen Meany' By John Irving has just made me weep as I finished this wonderful book.

I've read a few books by him before and been aware that this one was a masterpiece. But blown away by it - superb.

The Road is a superb book, but so bleak. Yes, I teared up a few times reading it. Just so grey and scary.

John Irving is a favourite author for me, and Owen Meany was my first. I was introduced to it by a BBC serial, which was brilliant. 

I don’t know The Road. Who’s the author?

Cormac McCarthy.

Cormac McCarthy. It's a dystopian near-future thing about a father and son travelling across a post apocalyptic America, trying to stay alive for each other against bandits, hunger, the cold etc.  I read it when my youngest son was a similar age to the boy in the story, which probably didn't help! 

I don't think myself particularly emotional, but on c4 news tonight they had a report on a recent bomb attack in Lebanon. The utter desolation of a father carrying the shrouded body of his young child set me off. He was walking with two other guys who clearly had no words. Its my grand daughter's 3rd birthday party tomorrow. The contrast couldn't be greater.

I don’t ever remember crying with relief at the top of an alpine route, because that was always only ‘half time’. The descent was frequently more serious than the ascent. One occasion when I did cry with relief was when we’d all safely crossed the glacier and reached the moraine after a harrowing ascent of Piz Palu in which two members of our party nearly lost their lives. They were only saved by the lightning reflexes of Mike Danford who dived on top of the last member of the rope of three (we were in two ropes of three) - like a rugby tackle in a very exposed position on the crest of an alpine ridge. The two who fell were both slightly injured and concussed. Two others, less experienced, fell apart psychologically, and only Mike and myself were OK. We tied together as a single rope of 6 with me leading and route-finding at the front and Mike, being larger than me, coming down last as ‘anchor man’. The descent and crossing of the glacier were quite dangerous in the afternoon sun, with precarious snow bridges. When we finally reached the safety of the moraine the WHOLE PARTY started crying as one. With relief. I’ve never experienced anything else quite like that. 

The occasions I was thinking of were, rather than after a particular near death incident, more after a long and stressful climb worrying about the weather and objective dangers, outcome in doubt with problematic lack of retreat options, absolutely knackered and struggling  with the altitude sort of thing. Where the tears come with just the relief of tension on the summit with no more up to do. Admittedly only when the descent is relatively straightforward.

It is a book which seems to completely split opinions depending on how one warms (or not) to the central character, but I am welling up now just thinking about the ending of Sebastian Faulks' Engleby. I first read it sitting in an airport in Italy. When I got to the bit about three pages from the end where he says, sitting years later in a psychiatric hospital, how he is free to "go anywhere" and starts to retell/reimagine (?) the key event of the book and I just knew immediately where he was going with it, it was all I could do not to burst in to tears. I had to put the book away, compose myself and wait till I got home to read the final pages with its heart-rending final paragraph.

The other bit of writing which always gets me is, of course, Robin Campbell's extraordinarily powerful obituary of Dougal Haston.

I wonder if people can roughly be split into two groups with regard to things which do not personally affect them: those who are more easily brought to tears by real events such as terrible stuff in the news and those who are more easily brought to tears by fictional events in books and films.

Yes, I experienced tears of joy at the top of the Fiva route (in Romsdal) - despite being quite badly injured after a long fall - having come within a whisker of losing my life.

I met the said mum outside the shop at a pub quiz the other day. Just saying...

Presumably the second category would also include those capable of being emotionally moved by a piece of music, which was where this discussion started.

Just remembered another one. I cried at The Angel of the North. Caught me totally unaware, walking about look at it feeling nothing in particular and the next minute I was crying. What's that all about?

No, I wouldn't put it in either category since it could evoke something real or fictional (or, strangely, neither). Altogether more abstract.

Do you find all music abstract? Even opera?

Certainly more abstract than film or the written word. Opera is different because it is not just the music.

It sounds like you are only talking about classical music. The greater part of popular music has lyrics as well as music.

Ok, any music without words. That is not just classical music. Sorry, I assumed it was obvious what I meant.

Really interesting thread.

I think it's one of my life's truly great pleasures that the right music has the power to bring on tears of joy.  I think "what an amazing passage of music - how can someone have written/played/recorded this?".  It is of course very personal, and I have been moved by classical, sacred choral, jazz and pop.  Interestingly, it's pop that gets me going more than any other style.  I won't give examples as they're personal to me, and always obscure musicians that I reckon nobody will have heard of.  

I will however give special mention to Faure's music, which for me is the pinnacle and I'm not embarrassed to say so.  I have only listened to the Requiem perhaps thirty times.  That is because I ration it.  I am only allowed to listen to it when I am in the tent on a foreign mountain trip/expedition.  It means a lot to me then - a mixture of solitude, loneliness, risk, beauty, the night sky, the insignificance of me and the heart-wrenching tenderness and majesty of the music.  It has to be the 1975 recording with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Music does it for me. Specific songs remind me of events or people. Sometimes I'll be fine, other times they will bring tears to my eyes. 

Lots of songs remind me of youth, teenage angst, times when life was simpler. 

Tonight, Tonight by the Smashing Pumpkins reminds me of my dad, no idea why but something in the lyrics makes me think of him. 

Dire Straights, Brothers in Arms I always loved but it became a much more emotional experience after Andy N and Steve P died and a new climb was given that name in their memory Brothers In Arms (VI 6). 

Lots of things make me cry or get a lump in my throat. But I'm amazed that after more than 70 replies noone has mentioned the Green Mile. I love how the story tellers can make you feel so much in such a short space of time. 

From a musical perspective, Martha by Tom Waites. The triggers are a mix of the subject of the song, Tom's voice and memories related.

Frank Turner - Long Live the Queen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RbNdwY4ujw&ab_channel=FrankTurner
Tears every time.

The end of "Kestrel for a Knave" got me good. I'd seem the film Kes umpteen times but never read the book so thought I would. Still gets to me now thinking about it after all these years. 

There's a piano piece that absolutely destroys me, don't know the name I just know when it comes on the radio that's me done for 10 minutes. It's the mixture of melancholy and hopefulness that the music evokes that sends me over the edge. 

The episode of The Last Of Us with post apocalyptic Ron Swanson had me bawling for a while, I'd calm down then me and our lass would look at each other and that'd set us off again.

Love a good cry now, after years of trying to bottle things up I find it quite cathartic and will sometimes seek out YouTube videos with the sole reason of getting all teary eyed. Sad dog stories do me right over. 

it opens the first side of Genesis Live from (i think) 1973, and I’m still listening to it now. Stunning chord voicings

Landscape can make me fill up. I remember driving from Kylesku up to Durness and being emotionally moved by the scenery. Also driving from Terrace to Prince Rupert in BC had the effect.

The very end of Gotterdamerung when the theme for Redeeming Love rises out of the flames of the burning Valhalla.

The Traverse of the Gods almost made me cry too.

Are you sure it wasn't just the wall motorhomes blocking the view?

Add to this list listening to Kim Leadbeater being interviewed by  Lewis Goodall on the News Agents podcast. There is hope for humanity when we have people like her in the House of Commons. I found lots of the things she said very moving. And there are some sad people who say politicians are all the same and just in it for themselves…..

In a good way, Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams, and Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor (and the Mass in B minor and loads of other Bach).

In a bad way, ColdPlay, Radiohead, Bob Dylan and many more 😂

In music, I know nothing more profoundly sad than the slow movement of Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata.

Pre NC500!

'I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other. We found each other in the dark.'

<blubs uncontrollably>

Books, films, TV. Thinking of my family. But not music, though I love music.

It's empathy with a story that does it.

Prostap

Well there's another one! That bit in Madame George where it tails off then comes back. Not every time but definitely some of the time.

My latest - the film Joy (Netflix) which chronicles the lead up to the birth of the first IVF baby. It reminds men how devastating it is for many of the women for whom the traditional system doesn’t work. That’s not to say that it cannot be equally devastating for some men.

They must gave clocked some miles in that old Vauxhall....   

Indeed. And they only had some dump of a disused hospital for a base, or so it seemed.

The transformation of Joey the foal to Joey the fully grown horse in the stage version (far, far superior to the film) of War Horse. 

The dump now has a worthwhile function as a hospice.

That’s very good to know!!

Another Netflix film that was rather touching, if bordering on the cloying is Maudie. Anyone else like that?

Fairport Convention played on the Stuart Henry Show in 1968.
One song was 'Bird on a Wire'
Judy Dyble takes the the first verse, nothing spectacular, there's a shared second verse, then Sandy Denny kicks in with the third verse. The power, the gorgeousness, the soul, makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and occasionally brings a tear of sheer joy to my eye.
My favourite moment in music.

The greatest female voice to grace popular music, for me. I'll never forget the first time I heard She Moves Through The Fair played on John Peel's late night radio show. Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.