I found myself with one extra song that I didn’t want to scrap, so Rufus Wainwright Week has been extended by a day. Lucky you! 🙂

Wainwright contributed this somber ballad to the soundtrack of Ang Lee’s powerful Brokeback Mountain. It played over the end credits, after that haunting final scene in which Heath Ledger’s stoically passionate Ennis Del Mar strokes his dead lover’s shirt and murmurs “Jack, I swear.”

I can’t believe that movie lost Best Picture to Crash! Come on!

The song was written for the film but I’m not sure which character’s perspective it represents, or if it really matters. The underlying message seems to be that some force, call it god or society (he calls it “the maker”), is preventing these two men from finding happiness with each other.

The first verse decries the endless string of obstacles in their way… each time one is overcome, another pops up in its place. The second verse, I think, refers to relationships with women (“one more notch I scratch”) used as a distraction from this forbidden romance.

The last verse strikes me as burdened with ultimate resignation: “Oh Lord, how I see that only can the maker make a happy man of me.” I don’t get the impression the singer expects the maker to do that anytime soon. Perhaps only in death, courtesy of the maker, will he find real happiness.