July 17, 2008

Terror and joy

I don’t write this blog regularly or even semi-regular-like as my father used to say.

I can’t.

I think all the time, but I want to escape from saving my thoughts.

I am in the midst of creating an opera from a book I penned.


Simple right?

It is terrifying.

We have very little money and a mountain to trek up involving artists and logistic leaps and slogs.

And so I move daily from abject terror to a giddy elation.

I never know how it will unfold.

Someone calls me back and I am high.
The calls go unreturned and I am reduced to a puddle.
My ex boyfriend sends us a $100 donation and I leap.
The fabulously wealthy mother of a Yale friend tells him to call me, to say she has NO MONEY and I am in a rage.
Can a heart and mind continue like this?

I suppose it is no different from what we see played out daily on Wall Street... big-huge, excruciating swings.
We hate the economy,
Then we are hopeful, and the market swings hundreds of points, like yesterday.
Today who knows?

Have we all been reduced to this pendulum of emotion because the real terror of the environment and war has inured us to the scary things that abound?
I have young adult children, 23, and about to be 20, well at my age, thank god they are not baby children. But I worry for these kids; I attempt to not obsess about their world or excessive expense and diminishing resources. I worry for their joy and freedom from fear.

As I write this I think that perhaps the wild ride of life has always been the impetus for writers, painters, and composers to create something else - to both divert themselves and others from tough times or to focus our energies on how to do things differently.

OK back to the OPERA salt mines. This week we finish scheduling auditions, which will happen next week. This means that the boat has sailed and now we head toward the dock and performances in September.
BON VOYAGE and Stay with us.