The Last Repair Shop

The week before the Academy Awards ceremony, our local theater showed all the Best Documentary Short nominations. A couple of my friends and I went to see them. All of the films were brilliant and compelling. I am glad I didn't have to be the one to decide who the winner would be. But one stood out for me: The Last Repair Shop, which ultimately won the Oscar. (As of this writing, you can still watch The Last Repair Shop on YouTube for free. I recommend it.)

The Last Repair Shop documents a crucial part of an extraordinary program in Los Angeles. For almost as long as I have been alive, Los Angeles has offered free and freely repaired musical instruments to students in the public schools. To do that, the city operates a shop devoted to the care and repair of the 80,000 musical instruments in the program. The Last Repair Shop explores the experiences of four technicians at the repair shop where broken instruments are fixed.

But the film is about so much more than repairing musical instruments or the people who repair them. It's even about more than the generosity of a public school system that still provides music education for its students. It's about courage, determination, commitment, caring, and hope.

Each of the four technicians has a personal story to tell. As they speak, their sensitivity for the children they serve, but in all likelihood will never meet, is obvious. Dana, who repairs string instruments, recalls how painful it was to come of age as a gay man in the 1960s and 1970s. “It's really hard being a kid,” he says. “Some of them come from places of love and support, and others come from huge dysfunction. The emotional broken things are more difficult. You can't glue that back together. That takes time, and it takes care.”

Paty, who works with brass instruments, describes the extreme poverty she and her two small children endured for several years when they moved to the U.S. from Mexico. “Sometimes I wonder what kind of little hands hold the instrument before me,” she says.

Duane, who fixes broken woodwind instruments, tells how a $20 violin he found at a swap meet when he was a kid changed his life. “You do whatever it takes because, for a young child that's interested in playing, that one instrument could change their whole life,” he says.

And Steve, an ethnic Armenian who tends to pianos, describes how, in the wake of his father's murder, he and his mother made a harrowing escape from Azerbaijan when his Armenian people were being kicked out of his native Baku City. He recounts his fascination when he saw a piano tuner at work when he was a very small child, and then the lucky irony that one of the people who sponsored him when he emigrated to the United States just happened to be a piano tuner who took him under his wing and taught him the tools of the trade.

Before each technician tells his or her story, the film shows one of the children, a beneficiary of the instrument program, talking about how much music provides solace, focus, and inspiration in their lives. “I love my violin,” says a little girl at the film's opening, as she holds the instrument and explains that her family is beset with many ongoing health issues. The violin allows her to enter her own special world of music. Another child describes how playing music helps her cope with the stresses and worries she faces in life. Yet another tells how his family would never have been able to afford the sousaphone he has learned to play, and yet now he is headed to college to study and take up a career in music. At film's end, an orchestra that includes the children depicted in the film, the repair technicians, music alumni from various Los Angeles schools, and a conductor from one of the Los Angeles public schools plays an original composition written for the film.

The film moved me to tears – really all of it did. But perhaps what was most striking for me was a montage of clips from each of the technicians summarizing their work at the end of the film:

Dana: I think a lot of people see a broken thing and they just think it's broken. It could be anything. Maybe it's public schools...

Steve: … or the United States or any other part of the world …

Duane: … Maybe it's just a $20 fiddle found at a swap meet …

Dana: … But when we see a broken thing, we think, 'Oh, with a little something here and a little something there, we can fix the part that's broken and make things whole again' …

Paty: … It's difficult work …

Steve: … But no matter what …

Duane: … You do whatever it takes because …

Dana: … It is one of the best things that humans do.

Steve: That's why this is not just the musical instrument repair shop. When an instrument breaks, there's a student without an instrument. No, no. Not in our city.

Duane: We know it could change their whole life.

Paty: Even if they don't know me, I'm part of that.

I happen to be married to my own Repair Shop, and that's one reason why I found the film so compelling. My spouse, Mr. Fix-It, can repair just about anything it seems, including many musical instruments. He loves building new things, too, musical instruments included. Where I (and I am a little loathe to admit this) see broken things, he sees possibilities. A broken object generates a trip to the basement where he might just have the replacement part. Or he makes a new replacement part.

Not everyone has Mr. Fix-It's talents. But most people can – an often do – support others, and often with profundity they may never know. The college friend of mine, for instance, who blurted out, “Syl, you are so funny!” (Really? I didn't know I had a remarkable sense of humor.) Or the choir director who picked me to do the solo. (Really? I didn't know my singing was that good.) Or the friends and family who, when I doubted myself, saying, “I can't, I can't, I can't,” countered that message with, “Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can.” (And it turned out they were right – I could.)

I am sure that college friend has no memory of the moment, nor does the choir director, who couldn't pick me out of a line-up at this point. Maybe friends and family more intimate with my self-doubts have some vague recollection of moments when they supported me, but they have no idea just how much their encouragement changed my life. What were most likely passing, inconsequential moments for all those people linger as a transformational experiences for me.

We are all changing the lives of others, usually unwittingly, by our actions and words. The Last Repair Shop teaches me to remind myself continually of the preciousness of the life before me, because what I say or do may have a long-reaching effect I will never know about.

Paty says, “Sometimes I wonder what kind of little hands hold the instrument before me.” She probably will never know whose little hands, whose budding life, her care is influencing. But what she does matters. Perhaps that is the biggest source of hope I know: What we do and say matters. More than we will ever know. And we get to choose. It's one of the best things humans do.

Love,

Sylvia

(And here, just for inspiration, is one of my spouse's creations, a guitar he built in 2017.)