findings this morning

Last night I came home from orchestra practice and spoke with Josette. She asked what music I played tonight and I told her the Danube waltz. Immediately, her face lit up. "Oh! Da Danube! Oh, oh, oh!" And her electric smile started telling this golden story of a golden night on the golden beaches of Cannes. She said she never missed a night at the Cannes nightclubs. They called her name, "Lydia! Lydia! Lydia!" and then she said every night, when the club was opening, they would play the Danube, and she would dance, and the lights underneath the floor would like up and illuminate the club and shine onto the beach, making the sea an inviting pool of infinite wealth. She felt like a princess. Royalty drenched in tight dresses, pumps, cigarettes, gaffawing friends, slick looking boys, sailors, toe tapping and gin dropping. Only in Cannes is there this magic, only in Cannes...

This morning I decided, for the moment, to hell with the ache of her life, forget about the journey. We know what happened. After she left Cannes, everything went to shit. But I'm not interested in psycho-analyzing anymore and neither is she. I'm not interested in talking about the regret and shame which she already lives with too much. Monday we are beginnging story hour, Josette and I, and I just want to hear about the parties. I want to hear about the happiest time in her life. Her life in Cannes, her days when she commanded the night club, conducted her own jazz-band swagger, did the jitterbug with all the boys and with bourdon in her veins, and when she was, like she says, a Princess. That's the story I want to get out of her. That one.

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I dreamed last night of an old friend. Someone I don't talk to anymore, really, but to someone who I have inistricable ties to and who I owe gratitude, for our falling out taught so much about my limits and my demons. But I wondered why this person showed back up in my dream state? Is it a longing to get back in touch with this individual, or was my dream state last night just some benign jukebox-- sometimes it's like that, no? Sometimes you just dream of old random moments and feelings and people and it doesn't mean anything but that. It's not always necessarily a call to action, right?

This business of dreams is tricky. Sometimes I think they are calls to action, and sometimes I think they are just crazy shuffle machines. Like the ipod shuffle. You have to know yourself to know how to interpret your dreams.

Than I thought, maybe the dream is tied to my ego. I've been doing a lot of internal work lately, deconstructing the ego. And certainly this person is connected to my ego, since our falling out was extrememly emotional and since my ego is tied to my emotional terrors.

Then I wondered, how closely connected are the ego and the subconscious? I think they are intwinded. Perhaps the Consciousness owns the neighborhood, the Subconscious owns a house, and the ego is a tenant. In the basement of the subconcious's house. But the ego is only a tenant! If we are aware of this, than we also realize that the ego's living arrangements, his conditions, are changeable, not nebulous.

Shit can change, shit can change.

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The Duke's words are true on so many levels, think about it...
"It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing."

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One day Wided and Samer had an arguement about the opera. Samer refused to believe that the arts were only meant for one group of people. He believed that the arts are for anyone, not discriminatory to one particular group. Wided disagreed with this.

And I have to agree with both. Duh, on a really basic level, the arts are for everyone. That's what I believe in my most idealized state. However, Wided is also correct, probably more so. All arts, not just the opera,have been stolen from the masses. Ticket prices say this. Demographics in audiences say this. Enrollment in arts programs by multi-cultural kids say this. Lack of funding to programs say this. The West has said, in more ways than one, that these art forms are only for certain groups of people. Some people are invited to attend and participate and some are not!

It's funny... the opera knows it's in trouble. There was an article in the Post a few weeks ago about how members of the Washington Opera have now begun coming out onto the Mall in full costume and doing spontaneous 15 minute operatice performances to random tourists, in the hopes of luring more people into their seats. Consider the history of the Opera for a moment. It has always been an elite art form, reserved for those bougie Italians and Germans and French. Now the art form is in crisis, as is the theater and the symphonies. It's very possible to see the art form dissolve within 25 years, as the old rich whites are dying out.

I think this shake up is good. I think if the opera and the symphonies and the theater fails, its all of the best. Yes, it will be totally detrimental, but this system excludes so many people, and I think it needs to burn. I think a new order needs to emerge, one that is different and one that includes everybody. We will never really lose the opera, or the symphonies or the theater, but I hope we lose this system. I hope we do, one day.

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Yes. If Arena stage offers me a position, I will take it. it is a position of a lifetime and it will teach me so many things, across the board. I think all of these thoughts I've been having this week is only equipping me for my future path, whatever that may be. I want to reach out to a lot of people, I am not interested in sucking on the white man's artistic institutional's cock. It's a gross cock. Have you seen it lately? I want to reach out to all people, be it through theater, film, TV, books, lecture tours, teaching, or music. Stories teach people have to live and people need words like they need bread, and EVERYONE should be able to get these things. Free of charge. Open to all. We're all one, why don't people see that? We're all one, and we got to remember that. We've got to.