(light chiming)
Downloaded from FILMXY
(birds chirping)
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] Once upon a long, long time ago
in a country by the sea, far, far away from here.
In a country where our summer is winter
and our winter is summer.
In a country where the water swirls
in the opposite direction,
and where trees grow that nobody has ever seen before.
And where sometimes you wonder if the sun sets
in the east or in the west.
And where everything is different.
And where you have to stand on your head
to see the man in the moon,
for even the man in the moon is different.
'Cause the moon itself is upside down.
Now, in this country which is near the sea
and where the sun regulates the ocean tides
instead of the moon like it is everywhere else,
in this country there lived a man.
The man was not rich, he was poor.
Not really very poor, just poor.
You see, when you're very poor it means
that you don't have enough to eat.
But when you are poor and just poor,
it means that you have enough to eat,
but you eat cheaply.
When you are poor and just poor,
it means you have to work hard.
And when you work hard, you get very hungry.
And when you are really hungry,
even the simplest food will taste very good.
And you will eat very well because you need the food
to give you the strength to work again the next day.
But all of that, you will understand
when you grow up a bit more.
(gentle music)
Let's go back to the country where
the man in the moon is upside down.
In this country by the sea there was a big mountain
and the mountain was not too far from where
the poor man lived with his family.
And the mountain was very big and made of stone.
There were soft stone and hard stone,
and lots of stones that was even harder.
The stones were many colors,
and some blue like the ocean, some were green,
dark green, and light, and there was red also,
and some were very dark blue.
Some of the stones, the ones that were very, very hard,
looked like they had fire burning inside them.
The really hard stones, of course, were the diamonds,
but they were very small.
The red ones were called rubies.
The blue were turquoises.
There are amethysts and garnets and there were stones
of many, many different colors.
And there was one stone that looked like a teardrop
or a piece of melted ice.
But it had a difficult name,
and the poor man could never remember the difficult name.
There were many others,
but there was a lot of ordinary stone also.
And the man who ate rather cheaply,
went to the mountain every day of the week, but Sunday.
(bells ringing) Because on Sunday,
he went to church with this little family.
(singing in foreign language)
(light music)
And he cut through lots and lots of ordinary stone
to get to the beautiful hard, colored stones.
And that was a lot of hard work,
but the beautiful colors of the stones made it all
worthwhile because that was the way the man who was poor,
but not very poor, earned money to buy the food,
so that he and his family could eat well and cheaply.
And at night, when the cool night wind blew
from the top of the mountain,
all the way down to the little thatched hut
of the stonecutter and his family,
they slept well and warm, and they all loved each other.
And that is the way it was.
(ethereal music)
The next day, the stonecutter did not find many stones.
The work was hard and the sun was hot,
and now it was getting to the middle of the day
and he had only found four garnets.
The garnets were light red.
He liked rubies better.
It was always a good day when he found rubies.
Rubies were deep, dark red and full of mystery.
And he could also sell them for much more,
but they were much more difficult to find,
and he did not find them often.
He was hot and tired from working the mountain,
so he went to the nearby waterfall
to wash the dust off his shoulders.
He liked to sound with the clear cascading waters.
The falling waters brushed the dust off his back
and he felt nice and clean.
The waters of the fall cooled him off also,
and he felt a lot less tired.
It was good to have the waterfall
so close to his work on the mountain,
because sometimes when he wanted to work on some stones,
he would carry the stones to the mountain pool
and do his work in the shade near to fall,
because then he could listen to the birds also.
The birds were always there, (birds chirping)
from early in the morning and all throughout the day.
And the birds drank from the pool near the fall,
and the falling water sang with the birds,
and the birds sang with the falling water.
And all of it, the falling of the cool water
and the singing of the birds in the trees near the pool,
made it a good place to come and rest for a while.
At times, he wondered if at night the bird slept
in the trees near the waterfall
or into trees lower down the mountain
where they could not hear the singing of the water.
Or perhaps the water sang very, very softly at night,
so it would not disturb the birds sleeping in the trees.
After a while, he climbed a big rock.
Close to where he had done the work for the morning.
There was a soft wind blowing now.
So he spread out his arms and let the sun and the wind
then dry him off.
It felt good to stand there on the big rock,
high above the village and the valley and the sea.
The sun had dried him off now,
so he said down to eat his food.
(gentle music)
And then, he thought about going fishing
with old Thomas near the pass of the reef.
In hearing the sound of the waves on the reef
in the seascape of his mind,
made him close his eyes for a moment.
And as he did so, he entered the world of dreams.
(light playful music)
And he flew with the birds over the waves of the big ocean,
and flying with the birds he saw dolphins,
playfully jumping near the path for the lagoon
in the seascape of his mind.
(gentle music)
And he reminded himself in his dream
to tell old Thomas about flying with the birds.
It could be a sign perhaps.
And surely, old Thomas would know.
Because he had been living on the beach
as long as anyone could remember.
And old Thomas knew all about the winds and the tides.
The stonecutter knew all about the stones
in the mountain and where to find them.
But old Thomas new everything about the sea.
(conc shell whistling)
The sound of the conc shell woke him up.
The sun was a little higher in the sky now and he had
remembered that he had promised his wife and children
that he would meet them in the village to watch the dancers.
So, he started walking down the mountain and he heard
the singing of the dancers from down below in the village.
And all of a sudden, he did not feel tired at all anymore.
(singing in foreign language)
He thought it would be nice to buy some flowers
for his wife at Ella's fruit stand.
And he bought the flowers from her granddaughter.
And he paid for the flowers with one of the garnets.
(singing in foreign language)
And now, he had only three left,
but that was all right because he knew
that his wife would be happy with the flowers.
And he walked a little faster.
He did not look back to wave at Ella and her granddaughter,
so he never saw the beautiful child
with the white dress in the distance.
She was wearing a crown of flowers,
and she was lovely to look at.
She did not wear any shoes.
And her eyes were very, very beautiful.
If the stonecutter would have seen her,
he would have noticed her eyes;
lovingly, dreamily beautiful like a secret found
in a garden of a dream in the early summer.
But the stonecutter did not see any of that.
After he had taken his flowers home,
he arrived in the village.
The dancers had already started.
His wife and children were there
and so was Ella and her granddaughter.
(upbeat music) (singing in foreign language)
(gentle music)
The smell of roasting coffee woke him up the next morning.
Old Thomas had given him some fish the night before,
so he walked out onto the beach
and started feeding the birds.
(gentle music continues)
Thomas had told him that the sign of flying with
the birds in his dream on the mountain was a good sign.
The stonecutter walked along the cool,
shady road in the forest.
He had passed Hiro's house and he had asked him
if he could make a tattoo on his arm.
And Hiro had told him that he would come
to the stonecutter's house a bit later in the day.
The stonecutter gathered greens for the rabbits of his son.
And now, he sat near the stone slab
in the quietness of the glade.
And from far away, he heard the singing of children.
And he thought how early they had started.
With the smell of the roasting coffee
and the birds and the sun also rising.
And he knew that his day on the mountain would be good also.
The day had started well with the feeding of the birds,
and the waves rolling in gently over the reef.
And when a day starts well,
he knew that it would keep on going well.
One good thing after another.
But it also would be nice if there could be a sign.
Like flying with the birds in his dream
on the mountain the day before.
And from away in the distance (school bell chiming)
he heard the school bell chime.
But he did not know if that was his sign.
And he hit the stone slab with his chisel.
(chisel clinking)
And the school bell chimed again.
(school bell chiming)
And as he hit the stone slab again,
the school bell chimed in perfect harmony
with the sounds of the stone.
And he knew that was his sign.
And he also knew that all was well.
(soft relaxing music)
When the stonecutter came home later that afternoon,
the children were weaving baskets and hats with Ella.
And his wife had been roasting breadfruit on an open fire.
But his day on the mountain had been very good.
Better than usual.
And all in all, with the birds early in the morning
and the gentle waves and the sound in the stone,
it had been a very good day on the mountain.
He was sitting at a table when Hiro arrived.
(soft relaxing music)
The stonecutter wanted a round tattoo and Hiro
told him that when completed,
the tattoo would illustrate the path of his life.
No matter where you started,
it would always be at the beginning.
Then he would move on, the beginning would become
the end of the beginning.
And also, the beginning of the end.
Once you begin your journey somewhere,
you will in the course of your progress,
forget where you began.
And if you did that, you would not know where
the circle of your life would end.
And he thought about all of that
as his wife massaged his back.
And at times, he would look out into the faraway
distance where the sun painted brilliant colors
on the waters of the lagoon.
And one night, he stood on the beach and looked
at the three quarter full moon,
and the silver reflections on the calm lagoon.
(soft relaxing music)
And standing on the beach, thinking about the fish,
and thinking about his family asleep in his little house,
all this made him wonder about the purpose of his life.
And he looked up at the moon hanging in the dark sky
of the night, and he wondered what it would be like
to fly beyond the moon and out to the stars.
And time started to slow down.
(gentle music)
The winds had been blowing steadily from the northeast for
the last four days now, and the lagoon was nice and calm.
(gentle music)
Every morning, he had walked over
to ask old Thomas about the fishing.
And every morning, the reply had been the same.
"Not today, perhaps tomorrow."
For three days, the stonecutter had watched the waves on
the reef while feeding his manta rays in the early morning.
And for three days, there hardly had been any clouds
in the sky at all.
Finally, the day arrived.
The stonecutter had not been flying with birds
in any of his dreams,
but if old Thomas said that today was the day,
then that was all right because he had been fishing
the lagoon for longer than anyone could remember.
Thomas and the stonecutter prepared their fishing lines.
They took a small board for cutting the bait
that the old man had caught the night before.
And the children took the palm leaf covers off the canoe.
And they rowed the canoe with slow, steady strokes
to where they would do their fishing for the afternoon
and part of the night.
(gentle music)
The steady rolling of the waves on the coral reef
was good to listen to.
And they saw a solitary white bird flying home
to the dark green hills in the faraway distance.
There was always solitude that went with the fishing.
And sometimes the stonecutter thought that he liked
the solitude of fishing better than the fishing itself.
There was solitude in the mountain too, of course,
but he never did have to do any waiting on the mountain.
There was always something to do.
(gentle music)
There was more time for thinking when fishing.
Most of the things you thought about would not make much
sense anymore in the early morning when the smell of
roasting coffee would start to drift out over the lagoon,
because then we'd only think about coming home
to your wife and children.
Letting your thoughts drift along slowly
was all part of fishing, like the waves on the reef
and the solitary bird flying away,
and the gold around the white clouds when the sun
would get lower and lower in the sky of the west.
They never talked much, old Thomas and the stonecutter.
And when they did talk, it was about fishing.
Sometimes he wondered if old Thomas would think about
different things than fishing, but he never asked.
The old man did not ask either.
So there was the waiting.
Waiting for the fish and the first little tugs on the line,
and then the fish taking the bait, pulling strongly.
And then the fish trying to get off the hook,
and swimming and darting any which way
to try and shake off the hook.
And then everything would start to speed up,
and time would go very fast until the fish
was safely in the canoe.
And then you could let time slow down again.
(gentle music)
And with the slowing down of time,
the waiting would start again.
And with the waiting, the thinking would start again also;
thinking about having breakfast in the early morning
of the next day made him smile ever so softly.
And he looked at the old man to see
if he had noticed him smiling.
But old Thomas was fishing and seemed
to be thinking thoughts of his own.
There were no more birds at sea now,
and the lagoon kept changing colors
with the reflections of the sun.
And they knew that the fishing would be good at night also.
(light calming music)
One early morning when he went to work on the mountain,
he saw a child.
And she was all dressed in white
with a crown of flowers on her head.
She was very beautiful and she had long hair,
and she did not wear any shoes.
He waved at the child and she waved back at him,
and that made him feel very good.
During the day as he did his work,
he often thought of the child.
When the sun rose high in the sky and became too hot
on his back, he sat down under a tree to eat the food
that his wife had prepared for him.
And he thought of the child again.
He thought that it would be nice if he would see her again
on the way back home.
Perhaps she would wave at him again from a distance.
At the end of the day when the sun went down in the sky,
he finished his work and he was tired.
He walked down the mountain road back
to his house in the woods.
But he did not see the child.
He did not tell his wife or his children about
the child with the white dress and no shoes on her feet.
And that night they all slept well and warm,
and they were happy and contented.
The child was not there the next morning either,
nor the next.
And the sun was hot and the work was hard,
and at the end of the day he was tired,
but the stonecutter did not mind because his wife
had told him that there would soon be another
little baby in the family.
And that made the stonecutter very happy,
even though he would have to work harder to earn more money
to buy the food for the new baby child.
And then, when he had almost forgotten about the child
in the white dress with the flowers on her head
and no shoes on her feet,
he saw her again early one morning.
And she waved at him as if she recognized him,
and he waved back at her and he felt happy all day long.
Perhaps because of the child with no shoes
or perhaps because of the new baby that was going to come
or perhaps because of both.
He was not quite sure.
He did not really expect to see her after he had stopped
work the next day when the sun was down low
in the sky again, but she was there on the side of the road,
a little closer this time.
The last rays of the sun lit up her dress
with soft yellow gold.
And she was very beautiful.
And she waved again.
She was close enough so that the poor stonecutter
could see that she smiled at him.
And he waved to her and walked back
to his little thatched house under the trees.
And that night, he did not feel tired at all.
Not even one little bit.
(soft calming music)
His encounters with the child became closer and closer,
and she was there again the next morning, and the next.
And her flowers never faded and she waved and she smiled
as before, and it all made the stonecutter feel very good.
And each time, she got a little closer.
And each time, she smiled.
And then, one afternoon just as the sun poured bright
yellow gold all over her dress again, she spoke to him.
And the stonecutter noticed her eyes,
and her eyes were light green.
Light gray green like the waters of the lagoon
just before you get to the coral reef.
Light green like the lightest of the green stones
in the mountain.
And the light green windows of her soul smiled at him.
(birds chirping)
She told the stonecutter that she would give him something
to make him feel good and to make his work a lot easier,
and she smiled as she spoke to him.
And she gave him seven beautiful music sounds.
(gentle humming)
She told him that if he would whistle them or sing them
or even hum them, then the sun would not be so hot
and he would be less tired
and he would feel good all day long.
And then, she disappeared all of a sudden.
But the perfume of her flower crown lingered on.
The stonecutter tried the sounds and the sounds went from
low to high like climbing up the steps of a ladder.
He whistled them also and sometimes he sort of hummed them.
But he liked singing or whistling the best.
While climbing up the mountain to get stone,
he would start a game with the sounds on the mountain.
He would wait until he was halfway up,
and then he would tell himself,
"Now I will start the music sounds.
And when I will have whistled all seven of them,
I will stop at the last sound."
And it worked.
He always found more beautiful stones
at the place where the last sound ended.
More than he had ever found in any place on the mountain.
The music sounds are the special magic all of their own.
(gentle humming)
Then, one day, he lost one of the sounds.
(eerie chiming)
It just disappeared and no matter how hard he tried
to remember it, it did not come back into his head.
He tried everything; humming, whistling, singing.
And every time he counted them, but he had only six left.
He had lost it and he was a little sad.
(light music)
And he wished that the child with the white dress
would be on the side of the road again.
And perhaps she would help him find the missing sound,
but the child was not there that afternoon.
And he never did find the missing sound.
Now he had only six music sounds left
and it bothered him not to have all seven anymore.
And he cut stone as before, and the work was hard,
and he was disappointed about the sound he had lost.
And then, he lost another one of the magic sounds.
He tried to remember what it sounded like so that
he could bring it back into his head, but it had gone,
disappeared just like the first one.
And he thought, pretty soon I will lose them all,
and then I won't have any music sounds left.
And the more he thought about it, the more he worried.
And the more worried, the more frightened he became.
Afraid that he would lose the next magic sound.
And because he worried about losing the next sound,
he counted how many he had left,
just in case he might have lost another one
of his magic sounds.
(light music)
And then, he lost it.
(eerie chiming)
Early in the morning on the way to the big mountain,
it disappeared and he knew it was gone.
And he knew it would not come back.
And when he climbed up the mountain, he worried a lot.
And he did not use his remaining sounds at all that day.
And when his work was finished, he walked down the mountain,
and he did not even notice the beautiful sunset,
and the child with the flower crown
and the white dress was not there either.
He looks in the grass to see if she had been there,
but no grass had been touched by any bare feet,
and there was nothing to tell him that perhaps
she had been waiting for him.
And there was no smell of flowers in the air either.
So, he went home to his little house in the woods,
and he was not happy at all.
Before he went to bed that night,
he hummed the four remaining sounds
to see if he had still four left.
And he forgot all about saying his bedtime prayer
for his wife and his little children.
And he did not sleep very well at all that night.
And in the middle night, he had a bad dream about losing
yet another one of the beautiful sounds.
And he woke up and went outside
his little house and repeated the sounds.
(soft music) (bugs chirping)
And sure enough, he had lost another one.
(eerie chiming)
Now, he had only three left.
(singing in foreign language)
And the next day, he did not play the music sound game
when he went cutting stone on the mountain.
He did not find many stones either,
and at the end of the day he was tired and sad.
Even thinking about a new baby
did not help very much either.
The thoughts about the arrival of the new baby
did not make him happy and strong like before.
Because the sounds were missing and he was afraid to use
the remaining three sounds for fear he might lose them.
And as he walked down the mountain at the end of the day,
he did not notice the bird singing in trees.
(birds chirping)
Nor did he notice the beautiful sunset.
He felt sad and tired and he looked down at his feet
as he walked down the mountain road,
back to his little house under the trees.
(singing in foreign language)
And then, he saw her.
(gentle music)
The child with the white dress and the flowers,
the child with no shoes tending to grass
on the side of the road, just like that.
And her feet were bare and when he looked at her feet again,
he saw that she was not standing on the grass at all.
Her feet with no shoes were just above the ground.
As a matter of fact, they did not even touch the ground.
And then he understood why he had not been able
to see her if she had been there before.
And he also understood why her feet never left marks
in the grass on the side of the road.
And he told her about losing the sounds one by one,
and how it made him sad.
And he told her how afraid he was about losing them all,
because what is the use if you receive something
that makes you happy, only to feel sad when you lose it.
It is better not to receive anything at all
because it will make you very happy for a while,
and then when you don't have it anymore, sadness comes.
And perhaps, it is best no to be very happy or very sad.
It is a lot better perhaps,
if you were like everybody else.
Not too happy and not too sad.
And the child with the flower crown looked at the poor
stonecutter with her gray-green soul window eyes
and then she smiled.
And as she smiled, the sun did it again.
The sun poured liquid gold all over
her dress again, like before.
And some of the gold got all over her face too.
She laid her hands on the shoulders of the tired stonecutter
and her hands were as light as butterfly wings.
She looked deep into his eyes with her green
soul window eyes and she said, "I was supposed to give you
three magic sounds only and no more.
But I game you seven so that you could lose a few,
and still have three left.
And you have lost exactly the sounds that you don't need.
And the three remaining sounds will be yours
from now on, forevermore.
And now, I must teach you how to use them correctly
and in the right order.
And when you use 'em exactly as I will teach you,
then you will never be said anymore as long as you live.
And all the time as she spoke, her gray-green soul window
eyes looked way deep inside of him.
And the girl with the white dress,
she told him the secret of how to use the sounds.
And they stood there for a long time in the golden light of
the sun and little stars started to dance all around them.
(gentle music)
And the child with no shoes on her feet,
told the stonecutter how to use the sounds.
And she warned him to use 'em in the correct order only
or the magic of the sound would not work.
The way to see if the magic of the three sounds
was still there would be to look up into the sky,
but only if the sky was blue.
And then he had to pick two clouds and look between
the two clouds into the blue of the sky
where the secret was.
The secret or the magic of the sounds.
And he asked about the golden dancing star also,
but she just smiled and told him she would tell him
perhaps later, but not now.
And the stonecutter understand everything.
And he thought he was lucky to have met
the beautiful child with no shoes.
And her looking inside his soul through his eyes
made him happy and he loved the child
with the green eyes very much.
Not at all in the same way that he loved his wife
and his children and the little house under the trees,
but differently.
He could not quite explain why or how,
but it all made him feel happy and contented.
And then, just as the sun went to sleep behind a horizon,
the child with the white dress disappeared, just like that.
He did not even see her go.
And the perfume of her flower crown lingered on.
And he looked in the grass and he remembered
that her feet never touched the grass.
And he hummed his three magic sounds
and they were all there.
And he walked down the road to his
little thatched house in the woods.
(gentle music)
The stonecutter went to the mountain
very early the next day.
He had hummed his three magic sounds
a few times and they were all there.
He would be working in a different place on the mountain,
so he took the forest road.
And now, he wanted to rest a bit
before climbing the mountain.
He was happy with the three sounds the child had given him.
But he was also a little afraid that he might lose them,
like he had lost four of the seven sounds before.
And from far away, he heard the school bell
ringing three times. (school bell ringing)
And then he heard the singing of the children join in.
And they sang the three sounds that the child
had told him would be his forever more.
And he hit the stone slab three times.
The sounds were the same.
They had been inside the stone for a million years perhaps.
And if they had been there for that long,
they would always be there.
And he knew that now he would never lose them.
Never, ever as long as he lived.
(waterfall splashing)
(gentle music)
And day-in, day-out, the stonecutter went to the mountain
to cut stone and he never saw the child
with the white dress again.
And he played the magic sound game at the mountain
and the stones, and sometimes he would find very small
stones that looked like the eyes of the child.
And then he thought of her and her flower crown
and her feet with no shoes.
And the new baby came.
And he wished he could show the new baby to the child,
and he was happy with the new baby
and he worked a little harder.
And he grew a little older,
but he did not mind the hard work and the small pay.
And as he grew older still,
he realized that he now had less time left in his life.
But he did not mind that too much either.
But it seemed that the mountain
did not ever grow any smaller,
no matter how much and how long he would cut stone.
Sometimes he would make a mistake with the music sounds
and the sun would be hot on his back again.
And at the end of the day he would be tired like before.
And then, one day, he whistled the magic sounds,
but they did not come out right.
They were not in the correct order
that the child had told him.
And he could not get them to go right all day long.
And he became tired again and the sun was very hot too.
The next day, the sun was even hotter, especially at noon.
The stonecutter was tired and unhappy and he looked up
at the sun and he wished that he could become the sun,
'cause then he could shine on everything
and nobody would be stronger than him.
He would shine on the fields and the trees,
and he would shine on the people,
and he would shine on the mountain,
and he would shine all day long.
And he would be so hot in the middle of the day when
he would be high in the sky, that people would have to go
and sit under a shady tree just to be
sheltered from his rays.
And he became the sun.
(gentle music)
(upbeat music) (birds chirping)
And he was happy again.
And everyday, he had to go to work like before,
but now he, himself, was the sun.
And the stonecutter who had become the sun,
had to do all sorts of things that were different
from what he was used to.
He had to rise early in the morning
and he had to color the entire surface of the sea.
And then, he had to color the tops of the highest trees,
and work his way down with the colors all the way
to the little drops of dew in the grass
that grew at the foot of the big mountain.
Then he had to wake up the roosters.
(rooster crowing) And the roosters
would wake up the chickens.
And then he had to wake up the birds
that slept in the trees.
And then he had to turn the flowers with his rays,
and that was a lot of work too because he had to keep
on doing that all day long with some of them,
right till he went to sleep behind the horizon.
And to keep the flowers happy and contented so that they
would make nice perfumes all day long
was a great responsibility.
But the stonecutter who had become the sun,
did all his new work happily and with great pleasure.
But what he loved most was shining his rays on the mountain
at the end of the day 'cause then he could light up all
the color of the beautiful stones
on the face of the mountain.
And as he did so, he hummed his three magic sounds
very, very softly.
And the sounds were in the right order again.
And with the music magic, the colors became even more
beautiful when he touched them with his rays.
There were the beautiful reds of the rubies,
the sky blue colors of the turquoises,
and the diamonds were of a beautiful sparkling white
like the dress of the child.
Then there was the deep dark blue which was the same color
of the ocean when it gets angry.
And the pink of the golden clouds
when the setting sun shines on them.
There was also the green of the emeralds which were like
the eyes of the child that have given him the magic sounds.
And at night, he would go to sleep just below the line
that is between the sea and the sky.
And he slept well and content and happily dreaming
about doing his work even better the next day.
And he thought he was very lucky to be the sun,
and to have all the sounds back in the right order,
just like the child had told him.
He was happy to be the sun and not the stonecutter anymore.
(singing in foreign language) The stonecutter had not
come home for three days now.
And for three days, old Thomas had come
to feed the birds early in the morning.
Sometimes he brought some fruit
for the stonecutter's family.
And once or twice he'd give 'em some fish
he'd caught the night before.
They had not seen the stonecutter.
Every morning, the children went to school,
but they had not seen their father.
And at meal time, his place had stayed and stayed empty.
So, in the afternoon of the fourth day,
they went looking for him.
They walked down the road until they got to the glade,
but the stonecutter was not there.
And there was nothing to show them that perhaps
he had been there on any of the days before.
And near the place where he usually did his work,
they found his tools.
His bag was still there,
but none of the food had been touched.
(singing in foreign language)
And near the waterfall,
his son found some drinking nuts and his knife.
But the stonecutter was not there either.
(singing in foreign language)
And the sky turned gold with the setting of the sun,
but they did not notice the beautiful sunset
because they were sad and disappointed.
(waves crashing) (singing in foreign language)
And then, one day, there appeared a little cloud
on the horizon.
The cloud started to grow and it became bigger and bigger.
And the bigger it grew, the darker the sky became.
The sun tried to melt the cloud away,
but it just became bigger and bigger.
The cloud started to make rain.
First of all, a little bit of rain so that the sun
could make a nice rainbow with it,
but then the cloud started to make real big rains
and the entire sky became dark.
And now, the cloud covered the entire sky.
And then, the cloud started to make really big rains,
bigger than anybody had ever seen before.
When the rains became bigger and bigger,
the rivers became big with the rain also.
Soon the rivers turned angry with all the rain,
and the winds got angry too.
It started to rain even harder,
and the sun could not do anything about it because the cloud
had become so big that the sun could not get through at all.
And after it had rained many days and many nights,
the sun said, "I'm tired of all this rain.
The cloud with all the rain is stronger than I am.
I wish I was the cloud."
And he became the cloud. (rain pattering)
(singing in foreign language)
And he slowly drifted along in the sky,
and the sky became blue again.
And when the sky was blue,
the cloud let the sun shine in the blue sky.
The cloud knew he was very strong and he happily chanted
the three magic music sounds.
The cloud knew it was stronger than the sun
because it just knew that it could turn black
and angry anytime he wanted to.
Everything went back to normal.
(singing in foreign language)
(light music)
And then, one fine day, the cloud thought,
"Why don't I see if I'm really stronger than the sun
and the mountain and everybody else.
I will just start to rain a bit more and see how black
and important I can become."
He liked the idea very much and he became very big and black
and then he drifted in front of the sun.
And the sun got scared and tried into that part of the sky
that was still clear.
That made the cloud so mad, and he told the angry winds
to blow and the angry winds blew over
the waves of the great ocean,
and it became a personal battle between the cloud
and the sun to see who was the most powerful.
And that made the cloud even more mad and he said,
"Now, I will really get dark and nasty and I will make
big rains bigger than anybody has ever seen before."
And that is exactly what he did.
(water rushing)
And he rained so much that all the flowers drowned
with the rain and the rivers got angry with the rains.
And the sun ran away because he got scared,
and the cloud rained on everything.
And the cloud rained very hard on the mountain, too.
But the mountain did not move.
And that made the cloud even madder
and the cloud started to rain on the mountain so hard
that the mountain started to cry.
But the mountain did not move.
It just stood there and cried.
And when the mountain cried, it made beautiful waterfalls
and the waterfalls washed all the stones nice and clean.
The colored stones did not shine as beautiful
as when the sun would shine on them at sunset time,
but the waterfalls were so beautiful that many people came
and looked at them and they tried to count them,
but there was so many that people lost count all the time.
And everybody said that the mountain
had made waterfalls of great beauty.
And that made the cloud very jealous.
And he said, "The mountain is stronger than I am.
I want to become the mountain."
And he became the mountain.
(birds chirping) (rain pattering)
(singing in foreign language)
(light flute music)
And then, early one morning, after the sun had started to
paint the tops of the trees and before the roosters woke up,
a man walked from his little thatched hut in the woods.
He had kissed his wife and his children who were
still asleep in the little house under the trees.
Asleep warm, happy, and contented.
And he took the basket with the food that his wife
had prepared for him the night before.
And the man went to the mountain and started to get stones.
(chisel clanking)
(light music)
The mountain woke up, of course, and he saw the stonecutter.
But the mountain did not care one bit.
He thought, "I will let him cut stone from me
for a little while.
I am so big that nobody will know the difference anyway.
But I don't mind."
The mountain thought that the stonecutter would soon
get tired and would have to stop at midday
would the sun would become too hot and burn his back.
Then the middle of the day came and the stonecutter went
and sat under the shade of a tree and ate the food
that his wife had prepared for him.
(gentle music)
Then, the stonecutter rested a while and when he was rested,
he went back to work and cut more stone
until well after sunset.
And the stonecutter came back the next day
and the next and the next,
and he kept on cutting stone day-in and day-out.
And the mountain did not think that was very funny.
The stonecutter kept on coming back day after day,
and that started to make the mountain a little mad.
And when the mountain got mad,
he tried to make the magic sounds, but they came out wrong
because they always come out wrong when you're mad.
And the mountain told the sun to shine a little harder,
so that the stonecutter would get hot and tired
and would stop cutting stone.
But the stonecutter kept on cutting stone just like before.
He did not mind the sun and the sun could not stop him.
And that made the mountain even more mad.
And the mountain tried to make the magic music sounds again,
but he got them all backwards this time.
They just did not come out right at all.
The mountain was very strong,
but nobody really loved the mountain.
Sure, everybody admired the mountain very much,
but nobody really loved the mountain like the family
of the stonecutter loved the stonecutter.
And finally, the big mountain had to admit,
the stonecutter is stronger than I am.
And the mountain wished he was a stonecutter.
And he became the stonecutter.
(gentle music)
(soft relaxing music)
The stonecutter had asked Hiro to come to the mountain
and finish the tattoo on his arm.
And when Hiro found him near the waterfall,
he was sound asleep.
So, he laid out his tools and he waited a while.
Then, he started to work on the tattoo.
The gentle tapping woke up the stonecutter
and he told Hiro about his dream.
In his dream, he had been the mountain.
He was very strong and very, very powerful.
But he had found out that when you have that much power,
nobody loves you anymore.
Sure, everybody or almost everybody admires you very much
because of all the power you have,
but nobody really loves you.
And when nobody loves you, you get very lonely.
Sure, you are too strong to admit that you are very lonely
and you pretend it doesn't matter.
But being lonely is no fun at all.
Now the tattoo was finished.
And as they walked back home,
Hiro told him that the circle of his life was now completed.
And the stonecutter remembered how lonely he had been
when he was the mountain in his dream.
And then he thought of his wife and children,
and those birds on the beach,
and the fishing with old Thomas.
And he thought, it is better to have
love than power anytime.
And as they walked down the mountain,
the sound of the singing got closer and closer.
The stonecutter was happy not to be
the big lonely mountain anymore.
And all of a sudden, he noticed that the grass
seemed greener, much, much greener than before.
(upbeat music) (singing in foreign language)
And he thought, this moment, this very moment,
right now and here, is going to be
the beginning of my new life.
(singing in foreign language)
And then he thought about his wife
and children and the new baby.
He said to himself, "I will bring them all to the glade
and I will show them where the sounds are.
And when they will hear the sounds,
I can tell them about the girl with the white dress
and the flowers on her head."
And you could tell from the joy in his heart,
that his new life had begun.
(singing in foreign language)
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
(pickax clinking)
Then the stonecutter cut stone on the big mountain.
And the work was hard and the pay was low,
and sometimes he would be very tired as he grew older.
And the sun was hot and burned his back,
but he came back to cut stone day after day after day.
And after a long, long day of cutting stone,
he would go back to the little thatched hut in the woods
where he lived with his family.
And they ate well and cheaply, and they slept well
and contented in their little house in the woods.
And they all loved each other.
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
Well, hear your story.
The story of the stonecutter who thought he was poor,
but who was not really very poor at all.
And had to learn not to be discontented.
And if sometimes you feel sad or unhappy,
then you can listen to the story
because you know that the lesson is true.
And perhaps one day, you'll meet a child with no shoes
and the flower crown and the white dress
with the gold poured all over it.
And perhaps she will smile at you
with her green soul window eyes.
And perhaps she will tell you the secret of
the three magic sounds and the little golden dancing star.
But I cannot promise you that.
And in this world, neither can anyone else.
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
(upbeat music) (singing in foreign language)