In 'Paris, Texas,' the quote 'I’m not afraid of heights, I’m afraid of falling' captures the protagonist's emotional fragility. Ry Cooder’s legendary score is played almost entirely on a slide guitar (or steel guitar). The steel guitar is played by sliding a metal or glass bar across the strings, creating a 'crying' sound with smooth transitions between notes. Cooder used a minimalist approach, allowing the notes to ring out and decay against the desert silence. This echoed the film's themes of isolation and the vast, empty landscapes of the American West. The instrument became the voice of the nearly-silent Travis (Harry Dean Stanton). This remains a definitive example of how an instrument can represent a character’s internal landscape, making the sparse dialogue of a movie legend feel heavy with unsaid emotion.