Love, Madness & Mozart

 

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That persistent character who keeps coming back; I think most writers have a few of them. Sometimes they inhabit a book that can’t, or won't, ever be satisfactorily finished. These conundrums are in every writer’s desk drawer and on every hard drive. 

My particular dark horse always returns around her birthday, at the end of April. She’s here, hanging around, just behind the curtains, even during day-light. I’m once again re-re-imagining scenes I’ve already visited many, many times. I’ve journeyed to her world for forty years now.

My Mozart is the first book I ever completed. A satisfactory ending, I think, still eludes me. Like Konstanze of Mozart’s Wife, this young heroine insists on speaking in the first person, which both narrows and deepens her POV. It’s like writing while pinned inside her dress. 

I’ve heard authors talk about having a “channeling” experience with their characters. There are many accounts of automatic writing and spirit dictation, some sounding as if they should be taken with salt. At least that's what my day-light self thinks. However, after the experience of writing this initial, and, perhaps never-to-be-finished story, I believe other-worldly communications can happen. Ordinarily it takes a period of concentration and study to make your characters  ("the dolls") get up and move independently, but in the case of a channeled story, they arrive fully realized, walking and talking.

So here's what I've learned, forty years after my attempt to tell this ghostly story. For a while, at least, after Mozart's death, Miss Gottlieb coped with her tragedies, until, in a final cruel blow, she lost her voice. After that, she appears to have lived on, among of the walking wounded, enduring a life of poverty until her death. Such was the fate of the first Pamina, pure heroine of The Magic Flute.

I'm glad I hadn't known her true ending before I wrote the one for this story. I was willing to follow the fantasy of a limited kind of HEA , not only for my sake, but also, the rational self argued, for marketing reasons.  Any darker ending was too painful--for me, for prospective readers--and, no doubt, for my spirit informant herself.

Wild Tulips 

 

So now it’s tulip-time April, and Green May is on Her way again. Tomorrow is Miss Gottlieb’s birthday, and once more I have glimpses of her spring-time, numinous world, animated by youth, love, and music. It makes sense that the “old” holidays too are upon us, Saint Brigitte’s Day, May Morn, Saint Walpurga’s night, Beltane, and all the other Divine Feminine Maidens who rule the second Cross-Quarter Day of the year.

   

My Mozart is “romance” in the original sense of the word, in the much the same way Romeo & Juliet  may be called "romance." Not romance in the commercial sense, but the old-fashioned bloody insanity of love, the madness which can, so easily, end in tragedy. The true domain of "Romance" is Castle Perilous, which makes drawing a final line under a tale of a hopeless passion so very hard to do. 

~~Juliet Waldron

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Day after Turkey

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Day after Thanksgiving here. We've reached the life stage where family lives far away and there are no youngsters nearby. Down to bare minimum family now. A brother-in-law who visits from Maryland. We cook less every year, but it's still too much. Husband & his brother have gone down to Lancaster County to go knife shopping on Black Friday, so here I am--tardy--but here.


Anyone who writes about Mozart has to have a love for opera, and if you've been reading me for even a small time, you know I truly adore this old, peculiar western art form. I'm beginning to break free of the tried and true repertory. (How many Madame Butterflys can you absorb?) The wonderful innovation of Met performances showing at the Movies allows me to go with a fellow devotee to see a performance from NYC of Philip Glass's opera, Akenaten.

Usually, you "hear" an opera more than "see" it. In the case of this production, however, the visual was a partner to the music.  As a result of the one-two punch, the performance stunned us.  Juggling has been added to the staging, and it provided another way to enter into entrancement. This composer is sometimes accused of creating what  has been called "Philip Glass Time," in which the audience is left spellbound. The popular genre this music is most clearly related to is Trance. 

And that's where I'll leave this, because words fail me. I can't do justice to this performance which combines choreography, music of orchestra and voice, and spectacle filled with color and symbolism.

Karen Almond / Metropolitan Opera) as seen in Opera Wire

Nefertiti & Akenaten

Karen Kamensek was the conductor; good to see a woman take the podium and do exactly what the work needed. No outsize stars here, just an astonishing piece of teamwork, craft, professionalism and ART. 

My friend and I were hypnotized. It took us a few minutes to collect our wits and walk with great care out of the theater with all those multi-plex (disorienting!) carpet patterns. Hours had passed; when we finally saw a clock, we were surprised by how late it was.     

Here's a link--barely a minute of your time, if you are curious.
  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSn_UAquOfw

~~Juliet Waldron

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"Ooooklahoma, where the winds come sweeping..." Enough! By Stuart R. West

Well, I imagine there aren't too many Okies singing that beloved song now.

Last week, a devastating, incredible wind storm blew through eastern Oklahoma. Some of you, not from the Midwest, might be scoffing, saying, "Oh my, Stuart, what's wrong? Afraid your hair will muss?"

A) I don't have any hair; B) people underestimate the power of wind.

How strong was it? It blew over a semi on the Turner Turnpike. Over 87,000 people were without power. One of the water suppliers lost some of their pumps, putting their customers on rations. A mobile home with a dog inside it was flattened (miraculously, the dog's okay). Finally, everywhere you look, trees are down, houses destroyed, people's lives in turmoil. And the local tree trimmer guys are set for life. The remnants of a war-torn battle zone.

Sadly, my inlaws were affected. The storm plowed through Broken Arrow, next to Tulsa, in Nature's indiscriminate and bullying way. (All photos are from their yard).

They live on a vastly wooded three acres and over half of their trees are down, some having fallen on the house. Karma smiled on them, though. Miraculously, the house is undamaged. My mother-in-law was out when the storm blew through but my father-in-law was at home. Apparently, he'd had no idea it'd happened. Maybe he had his TV headphones on. I'm sure when he went outside, though, he was in for a shock. Anyway...maybe it's good karma paying them back for the nice things they do. But the clean-up, ay-yi-yi!

My wife packed up her loppers and headed down. Her brother brought the chainsaw, his wife supplied tea and lemonade making skills. Unfortunately, I couldn't go because I wasn't supposed to make long car trips. Recovering from "major" surgery, don't you know. (Whew. Dodged that bullet).

But the clean-up crew could only do so much. One of the downed trees was thicker than a giant's thumb. No chainsaws could even begin to bite the bark. 

My inlaws had an estimate. Crikey. I need to get into that line of work. Sadly, the guy says he'll have to cut down another tree to get his truck into the backyard. Headache after heartache for them.

Still, the house is intact. So is their health. Unlike many other Oklahomans. My prayers and well wishes go out to them.

Never underestimate the power of wind. You can't do anything about it, I'm just sayin'. (And I never want to hear that happy song about Oklahoma wind again.)

Speaking of Oklahoma, my book Ghosts of Gannaway may take place in the fictional town of "Gannaway," but don't be fooled. It's loosely based (minus the ghosts, natch) on the town of Picher, Oklahoma, another nature destroyed town. Read it and weep and pull the covers up over your head!

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