The Cuckoo's Nest

If a house breathes with the life of its inhabitants then mine just exhaled.  The occupation is over.  My exile has come to an end.

For six months, my house was rented to a woman whose pent up nesting urges filled my home with so much stuff that not a single surface was visible in any room of the house.
She invaded my cupboards, cabinets, and closets and co-mingled our belongings into a jumble of treasure and junk that looked like a packrat's paradise. Christmas decorations, religious shrines, seashells, and candles everywhere.  An air of lunacy and woo woo hung throughout the house. She violated boundaries that any reasonable short term renter would find irrational.  She replaced shelves of my books with her own. She moved or  re- hung pictures and artwork on the walls,  moved furniture into the garage, and lined the threshold of the front door with dead flowers.

In the front of our house, red, white, and blue bunting hung from the windows along with a Christmas flag. The yard was cluttered with angels, a gazing ball, and sea glass. Holiday confusion in the month of April. The neighbors were happy to see us.

I might have found within me the slightest bit of compassion had it not been for the fact that she had so violated my privacy.  Now I realize that renting a house furnished leaves one vulnerable and I should have locked away every personal belonging - lesson learned. However, I had rented the house for months without incident. When I confronted her she responded quite matter of factly,
"I told you I was a decorator."
Silly me.
So this gave her the license to pull out my personal possessions and re-purpose them in unimaginable ways? In her mind it did.

It was both fascinating and disturbing - like looking into one of those warped mirrors in the fun house.
A wacky way of seeing the world.

It was my housekeeper, though, who said it best in a text message to me:
"Your house need you."

I realized it really wasn't the things that bothered me. It was her presumption and invasion of my space that got to me. When I suggested I go through the house to separate my things from hers so as not to have my things unintentionally packed up with hers when she moved out, she said she did not want her house dismantled.

Her house?
She, who had already dismantled my house?

Wars are fought over territory.  These were fighting words and any shred of compassion on my part went out the  bunting-draped window.  I had reached my limit. I was at the end of my patience.

All of a sudden, the crystal heart given to me by a friend, that had been carried from the dining room side-board drawer up the stairs to the back of the house and placed in the little marble box from a bookshelf in the office and then moved into the back bedroom to be displayed on a dresser with her rosary beads became a symbol for the whole mess.
She had touched, searched, foraged, and moved nearly every single item in my house and it flat out made me mad.
She had to go.
And I needed to come home.

All's well that ends well.  I have reclaimed my house and my table tops.  My rooms have been put back in order. The bunting is down and probably won't see the light of day for another year.  The neighbors have seen enough of it.
As for the crystal heart -
it will always be a  reminder that
Home is where the heart is!

Poetry and Passion Keep Him Young

http://www.latimes.com/features/home/

To All of My Devoted Readers -

This link will take you to an LA Times feature story on one of my beloved writing "students"  85-year-old poet, Jim Haddad, whose other passions are his wife of over 60 years and a Japanese garden in Pasadena.  I will be following up with a post on this prolific memoirist and poet at a later time.  For now, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Jim Haddad and his remarkable garden.  Note there is an open house on April 28th.  It's worth the trip.

My Dramatic Life

Some years ago, my picture appeared on bus shelters throughout the city of Fullerton as part of an advertising campaign for a summer theatre program for a local church. The campaign featured a giant version of my head shot with the caption: Amy - Drama.

A friend called me after driving past one of the bus shelters and said, "Either you are doing something big or you're wanted."
I joked that I'd finally made it on to a marquee.

I've thought about the visual irony of those pictures plastered on bus shelters and how apropos the caption Amy - Drama really was.  Someday, perhaps, it will be the  title of my memoir!

Through the years I have come to recognize a pattern. The shows I direct often reflect some aspect of my life circumstances. Whether in thematic through lines, dramatic metaphors, subtext, or the lyrics of songs, my shows almost always take on a deeply personal meaning for me.  Perhaps subconsciously, I am drawn to material that resonates.  Perhaps it is simply coincidence. Perhaps, like poetry,  plays and musicals are just open to interpretation.
For example, Into the Woods provided a rich context for the parallel real-life drama I was living as my brother was dying from AIDS in 1994.  Sondheim's lyrics and the show's theme that "Into the woods and through the fear you have to take the journey" seemed written for me.

"No More questions. Please. No more tests. Comes the day you say what for? Please No more. No more riddles. No more jests. No more curses you can't undo left by fathers you never knew. No more quests. No more feelings. Time to shut the door. Just no more."                                  

"Sometimes people leave you - half way through the wood. Do not let it grieve you. No one leaves for good. No one is alone. Truly. No one is alone. People make mistakes. Fathers. Mothers. People make mistakes. Holding to their own. Thinking they're alone. Honor their mistakes. Everybody makes. One another's terrible mistakes. Witches can be right. Giants can be good. You decide what's right. You decide what's good. " 

 I have frequently been able to connect the drama of my life with the drama playing out on the stage in front of me. Directing musicals has been an extremely soulful and sometimes healing experience. Like Shakespeare's "mirror up to nature," I am able to see my own life reflected in  my artistic projects, choices, and material. I cannot say these are conscious choices. In fact I see the reflection only after I am well into the process. Once again this has happened with my most recent production.

Right now I am directing Beauty and the Beast. As I sit and listen to the character of Belle sing songs with lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice about her journey that takes her away from her home, I can't help but be startled by how closely her sentiments express my own.

"Is this home? Am I here for a day or forever? What I'd give to return to the life that I knew lately... My heart's far,  far away. Home is too."

Belle's separation from home teaches her important life lessons.
One of the things that has changed in me since this period of exile began is my need to plan and to have  loose ends neatly tied up.  It has changed my very approach to life.  Essentially the need to plan is a need for control.  I have come to understand that the illusion of control offers a false sense of security about the future.  Instead, I've had to work on trust and faith - believing that it will all work out as it is meant to. 

"There's been a change in me.  A kind of moving on.  Though what I used to be, I still depend upon. For now I realize that good can come from bad. That may not make me wise but oh it makes me glad. And I never thought I'd leave behind my childhood dreams but I don't mind. I'm where and who I want to be. No change of heart a change in me."

Art imitates life...life imitates art...and so it goes. This is one of the great gifts that comes from working in the theatre.
Shakespeare was right. "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players."
And so the innocent caption on the bus shelter summed it up. Amy-Drama.
On with the play....

Musical Memories

Whenever My Fair Lady plays on my stereo (or now on my ipod) I am always taken back to being six-years- old and going to see the movie version of the Lerner and Loewe musical with my father.  He took me because I was infuriated that Audrey Hepburn had beaten Julie Andrews out for the Academy Award that year. I could not imagine how Eliza Doolittle could possibly have been better than Mary Poppins!  Daddy took me to the movie because he wanted me to see what was so special about My Fair Lady. 

 I had seen Mary Poppins for my 6th birthday. It was a memorable birthday all round. After attending Mary Poppins,  I came down with a case of lice - much to my mother's horror.  I remember sitting in the living room of our home, Mother picking through my hair with some ghastly medicine burning my scalp - the both of us crying all the while.  But I digress.

I recall sitting transfixed through My Fair Lady and can say that it was quite possibly the moment I fell in love with musical theatre.  I remember bounding through the front door of our house on Resh Place and reciting Henry Higgins' famous "Damn, damn, damn, damn" to my mother and not getting in trouble for cursing -  "I've grown accustomed to her face..." what a line! What a moment.  My heart was utterly captured and the course of my life was set.

The role of Eliza eluded me as a performer, but I still have every word of the score memorized as if I'd played her. In fact, it will always be the role that got away.

Funny how those roles stay with us.  Last night I saw the movie Quartet.  It is a charming film about a group of aging singers and musicians who live together in a retirement home for musicians in England. As I sat in the audience, I couldn't help thinking of how I'd fallen in love with  My Fair Lady at six  and   how I was sitting in another movie theatre forty-seven years later, gray and vocally out of shape, watching these grand thespians, opera singers, and musicians still clinging to their favorite roles,  reciting the number of curtain calls they'd taken. Roles that last a life time.

It is touching and life affirming.  I fell in love with the theatre all over again. The passion, the eccentricity, the ego, the pride, and the poignancy of the  inevitable passage of time reflected in dressing room mirrors and shaky soprano voices.
I adore the bigness of personality and the joy that comes from a line, verse, or chorus belted out by a group of performers gathered around a piano.

To this day, I hear the swelling of those strings at the end of "I Could Have Danced All Night,"  and my heart soars, my throat tightens and my eyes brim  with tears. Sitting in that movie theatre last night, watching Quartet,  I was grateful that Daddy had taken me to see My Fair Lady when I was six- years -old.  

 I am grateful that I have spent my life loving musical theatre.

Amour Up Close and Personal

I recently saw the film, Amour directed by Michael Haneke. This exquisitely crafted, unsentimental, and honest look at caregiving and the end of life made me nod my head more than it made me wipe a tear. In fact, I didn't shed one.  I found myself more often thinking, "Yes, that's right. That's the way it is." I would upon occasion grimace at a scene remembering my own experience as a caregiver. The story of Amour is direct and accurate. Hearing the character Anne's cry from the shower "hurts" made me shudder recalling standing outside of my mother's door hearing her cry out "cold"  as the nurse struggled with nozzle in hand.  Watching the nurse give the character Georges, instructions on turning and sheet pulling brought me back to my brother's bedside as he lay helpless, dependent on the kindness of strangers and the love of family.
The serious and at times empty look in the  husband's eyes - whose days had become about diapers and feedings - eyes behind which conflicted, unimaginable thoughts dwell in hopeless resignation.  "Yes," I nodded. Those were my eyes. My thoughts.

The pacing of the spoon to the mouth. The slow, labored swallow. The boredom of the fixation on how many spoonfuls went down. The fumbled aim. The tight lips refusing another bite. The impatient jamming of just one more. "Yes," I nodded. I, too, pushed the spoon just that way and felt the frustration of the turned head and the terror of the anger that bubbled up within me.   Complete control and complete lack of control collide in those tiny moments bringing life into focus in a frame so small it is no wonder it was so readily captured in the film, Amour.  At the bedside, life becomes a series of close ups.

The tenderness, the humility, the dependence, the humanity, the exhaustion, the struggle - it is all there to see - raw and true through the camera's lens and in the hands of a masterful, courageous storyteller.
The bedside is its own world.  It can be a lonely place.

 Even the cruelty of indifference and the insensitivity of a callous caregiver is captured. I recalled my own vigilance and authority as I monitored the actions of hired help.  The bed must be supervised, dignity protected, and personhood preserved no matter how diminished it may appear. Caring for the dying is not a job.  It is a calling.  And not all are called to do the job.

Upon occasion, the window opens allowing mystery and mysticism to bring a renewed sense of awe when the meaning of life and the journey to death all seem sacred  and where birds lead the way to a crematorium or bring a message of comfort. Yes, that too, I experienced. Again, I nodded.  This is a film for anyone who has been there.  This is a film that will open the eyes of anyone who hasn't.
It is not a good time.
It is a good film.

 I emerged from the theatre, dry eyed, somber, and grateful.  While the bedside has brought me to my knees in anguish it has also taught me the greatest lessons in life.  We don't talk about it over dinner or polite conversation but my experience with death has made me the person I am today.  To understand me is to understand that I have pulled the dentures out of my mother's mouth to brush them and have wiped my brother's bottom and held both of their hands as they drew their last breath.  This is not a badge of honor. This is life in close up.  I am grateful to have been able to identify with this film so personally. It reminded me of where I have been. It reminded me that we are much stronger than we ever imagine ourselves to be.  It reminded me of the hospice workers who face this story every day.
It reminded me that at the end of life, compassion, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, patience, humility, and gratitude are essential compass points.

 But the one true guide is amour.

Did You Hear the People Sing? Another Critique of Les Miserables the Movie

What choice do I have?  Everyone's a critic, right? So can you blame me for weighing in on the most anticipated movie event of the season?  Especially when the movie is a musical? The  musical I just directed last spring? Indulge me.

The movie version of Les Miserables is a cinematic masterpiece. Director Tom Hooper gives the viewer the panoramic scope of revolution and the close up brutality of its effects on Victor Hugo's iconic characters.  The movie drags you along through the dank, dreary, and desperate time through streets, sewers, and along the Seine with tight frames and sweeping cinematic shots. Les Miserables the movie does what a movie can and should do as a visual medium. Naturalism and realism are expected in film and Hooper delivers.

Which is why Les Miserables the cinematic masterpiece made me appreciate Les Miserables the theatrical masterpiece even more.

There have been other non-musical movie versions of Les Miserables, the most notable being the one with Liam Neeson as Valjean.  Hugo's story is epic and requires epic  story-telling one way or the other.  It's a great story.

What makes Les Mis the musical singular in the history of musical  theatre is its score! Boublil and Schoenberg wrote and composed a score as powerful and soaring as the story. It is in the best sense, an opera.   Schoenberg's music serves the story note by note, measure by measure from crescendo to crescendo - from recitative to soaring ballad - forte to pianissimo - the music is what makes the musical.

And the music is what was missing in the movie.  Oh sure it was there - kind of.  Boublil and Schoenberg both are credited as part of the screen writing team.  Somehow, in the mix, Boublil  forgot about his partner. In a musical that makes my insides explode with emotion with the thunderous and brilliantly woven  four- part barricade sequence, I was caught up in the realistic slaughter of idealistic students without the accompanying musical underscore.  It was there, buried beneath the rubble - barely audible most of the time.  There were selected moments when the music did what it is capable of doing - the heart breaking strings swelling  as we take in the deadly toll of the battle but the music was secondary to the visually graphic cinematography.

Don't get me wrong - I know that movies are a visual genre.  But oh how I missed Fantine's powerful belt in I Dreamed a Dream and the stillness of Valjean's Bring Him Home. Taking nothing away from Ann Hathaway's cheek bones, which we saw aplenty - or Hugh Jackman's mop of curly hair that barely grayed over the decades - both of whose performances I thought were credible with an abundance of tears in close ups that made the songs intimate at best and unmoving at worst...and so let's talk about Russell Crowe.
What were they thinking? Two of the best songs in the musical reduced to a semi-spoken, choked performance by a non-singer is perhaps the most grievous offense of all to the score.

In terms of storytelling, I thought the placement of I Dreamed a Dream was a startlingly good choice and the addition of the song Suddenly that Valjean sings about Cosette helped fill out a weak plot point in the musical.
Master of the House lost its charm although it had more than capable performances by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the Thenardiers.  Directorially, the much needed comic relief descended into the dark abyss with the rest of the story.

They might have shaved thirty minutes off the movie had they simply picked up the tempos which were at times dirge-like serving the close up naturalistic approach to the songs.
This worked best as Marius (Eddie Redmayne) sang Empty Chairs at Empty Tables - though "the grief that can't be spoken"was there in abundance as the tears poured down the young man's face. His voice still soared where it needed to. Hooper left most of the Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and Marius songs alone and that was a good choice.
But what happened to Eponine (Samantha Barks)? Somehow, her character felt diminished - albeit rain drenched for A Little Fall of Rain - she disappeared at the end - a love story lost in the shadows.

So what does this all prove?  As a theatre director and advocate, it reminded me that plays and movies are completely different genres. The theatre by its very nature is larger than life and an epic story like Les Mis can be told simply, representationally, and effectively with the creative expanse that can happen only on the stage and in the imagination of the audience.

And a great score like Les Miserables should be sung.

Beyond War Revisited

In the 80's, I was involved in a peace movement called Beyond War.
I was a new mother in my mid-twenties.  The arms race was on high speed
and the threat of nuclear annihilation hung over humanity.
Idealistic and passionate, we sat in the living rooms of friends and families
preaching the gospel of unilateral disarmament.

So influenced was I by the principles of Beyond War,
 that I forbade my children to play with guns of any kind.
 We were a weapon-free house.
No Atari video games in our den either.

So committed was I to the cause that when my son went to
Knott's Berry Farm for a birthday outing, he ended up with a
fringed suede purse which I dubbed a "saddle bag" instead of
the holster and silver toy pistols he longingly gazed at in the souvenir shop.
I have a photo of him staring into the camera looking very tough with his
saddle bag strapped across his little 5 year-old torso.

This was perhaps, the only radical step I have ever taken in my life.

I believed that violence begets violence;
that words can be weapons too;
that how we think about others and the language we use to describe our differences matters;
 that our individual choices do in fact impact the world.

My choice as a young mother to withhold
 toys that fueled the imagination of warfare and violence
was an earnest effort to make a difference.

My critics  said it wouldn't matter.
Withholding weapons would only make my children
want them more.

Not true.  Both my children are well adjusted adults who have no deep- seated longing to wield a gun or to blow up the world.

And today, twenty-eight years later, I still believe I was right.
Perhaps it is time to return to the principles of Beyond War -

We are one.
I will resolve conflict.
I will not use violence
I will maintain a spirit of good will.
I will not pre-occupy myself with an enemy.
I will work with others to build  a world
beyond war.

We face new perils today.  As I languish at times, overwhelmed by technological advances, the de-sensitization brought on by school shootings and gun control debates, and the endless cycle of war and violence, the simple choices of our every day lives seem to make more sense to me.

The cause of peace can be global or it can be carried out on an individual basis - one to one.
Modeling conflict resolution and standing up against bullying and hatred are all things we can do on a daily basis.

As a Pastoral Counselor, I must re-commit to strongly advocating for the necessary support services for those among us who suffer with mental health issues and illnesses.
If the counselors could rise up with a voice as strong as the gun lobbyists perhaps we could make an impact.

As 2013 looms, the massacre of innocents is fresh in our memory and the grief is raw in our hearts - let each of us ask ourselves how we can make a difference in our day to day lives with the people in our immediate communities, workplaces, schools, churches and neighborhoods.

The just cause of peace may be a global one
but it begins at home.
It begins with each of us.