Your My Dream
It began with me listening to a compact disc in a car on my way to Philadelphia in August 2004. My fraternity brother and I were driving to a conference for the weekend and his choice of riding music was the cast recording of a Broadway musical that he’d love for many years and that I’d only heard about through its scores ever presence, not even the whole score but really one song that stood out above all others. When he placed the disc in the player and the car began to move so did I. Along with the car and the conversation and the disc I began to move down a road as well. By the time we’d completed our two hour journey to the City of Brotherly love I had fallen in love.
I was in love with a musical that I’d never seen performed. That didn’t matter at all. Through the words and the music I had created every nuance of the show in my head. In my mind I saw how the curtain rose and the final bows of every principle and every ensemble member of the company. It was real to me.
From then on I wanted to know everything there was to know about how the show came to be and why. I craved the living history of the musical that was living history. While some of the characters seemed at times larger than life, as there voices were all the time, in very fine ways I was able to connect with them. I loved them as if they were my own and because I knew that on different scales and in different times and in different situations I was them. I knew that ultimately humanity is something sans different. Humanity is common. Our emotions, our desires, our quests, our needs, our touches, we are linked by them. They are our common strands of thread that weave us together.
Tonight, on this Christmas night I saw with my open eyes images, persons, props, things, to correlate with the words and music I’ve become so familiar with. Aziza and I walked into a theater in an almost haste to find seats side by side as we were the night of our high school graduation nearly ten years ago. We were to share in an experience.
In the beginning, I was sitting in a chair in a dark sold out theater surrounded by strangers and saddled with friendship familiarity. But just after the Earthly space around me grew darker and I saw a burst of blue light adorn what was once a naked white screen I found myself, at least my mind and spirit, in another space and place. My body was here but so much of me was somewhere else.
It was as if with every frame I was lifted further and further up and out into another orbit. One occupied with an unnamable energy. I was captivated. I felt their language. When they spoke and sang at moments I felt they had taken the words from my mouth and feelings from heart and strength from my body to produce this. To learn, to love, to lead. To feel, to fail to be free. To dare, to defy, to dream.
This evening was much more than I thought it would be. It was reaffirmation. It was uplifting. It was reality and even better it was a dream that became a reality.
I was in love with a musical that I’d never seen performed. That didn’t matter at all. Through the words and the music I had created every nuance of the show in my head. In my mind I saw how the curtain rose and the final bows of every principle and every ensemble member of the company. It was real to me.
From then on I wanted to know everything there was to know about how the show came to be and why. I craved the living history of the musical that was living history. While some of the characters seemed at times larger than life, as there voices were all the time, in very fine ways I was able to connect with them. I loved them as if they were my own and because I knew that on different scales and in different times and in different situations I was them. I knew that ultimately humanity is something sans different. Humanity is common. Our emotions, our desires, our quests, our needs, our touches, we are linked by them. They are our common strands of thread that weave us together.
Tonight, on this Christmas night I saw with my open eyes images, persons, props, things, to correlate with the words and music I’ve become so familiar with. Aziza and I walked into a theater in an almost haste to find seats side by side as we were the night of our high school graduation nearly ten years ago. We were to share in an experience.
In the beginning, I was sitting in a chair in a dark sold out theater surrounded by strangers and saddled with friendship familiarity. But just after the Earthly space around me grew darker and I saw a burst of blue light adorn what was once a naked white screen I found myself, at least my mind and spirit, in another space and place. My body was here but so much of me was somewhere else.
It was as if with every frame I was lifted further and further up and out into another orbit. One occupied with an unnamable energy. I was captivated. I felt their language. When they spoke and sang at moments I felt they had taken the words from my mouth and feelings from heart and strength from my body to produce this. To learn, to love, to lead. To feel, to fail to be free. To dare, to defy, to dream.
This evening was much more than I thought it would be. It was reaffirmation. It was uplifting. It was reality and even better it was a dream that became a reality.
posted by ClayStarr at 2:10 AM
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