Happiest Honorific 4/12/09

I just try to play music from my heart and bring as much beauty as I can to as many people as I can.

Charles Haden
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Greetings friend.
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I once saw a production of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" which was one of the dullest, most boring things I've ever seen on the stage. What? How could Shakespeare be boring? Simply because there was no heart in it. Every time a performing artist goes out on the stage there has to be something big at stake. But those men were not assassinating the leader of their country and the most powerful man in the world. It was as though they were sticking pins into a rag doll. It made me yawn.

My teacher Edward told a story about his teacher, the Russian actress Maria Ouspenskaya. She watched a scene prepared by her students and then said "It's very nice. But where are the bubbles?"

To make the bubbles happen on the stage, as they happen in a glass of champagne, whether by a singer, dancer, musician or actor, requires a total commitment of heart and mind. One can play the notes or say the words correctly, but that does not make music or drama. Many people don't understand that, including some critics.

Why is there such a commitment needed? Because that is what is owed to the work itself and to the audience as well. We can be many things on the stage. No two performances are exactly alike. But the one thing we absolutely cannot be, the one thing that is not forgivable, is to be boring.

The arts are about truth and beauty. It is a sharing experience. Music speaks to the mind as well as the heart. It is what happens between the notes that makes the music. The listener to the music or the play is being invited to join the performer on a journey through an experience of total being. It has been said that going on the stage is like jumping off a diving board without knowing if there is any water in the pool. It can't be done successfully without a heart full of faith, trust and unconditional love. In a moment of time or a flash of space an artist can open up the door to a hidden place of reality, bring up from some secret deep an understanding of life not seen before, turn over some stone and expose the light underneath, blow the dust off ancient beauty. An artist faces and handles ice and fire.

Yes it's dangerous. But it's that danger and that trying that keeps the artist going back to his easel, his piano or back on the stage. There is nothing boring about it.

Vagabond Journeys
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Arise and greet the day.
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SPRING QUIZ

THIS IS NOT A CONTEST

What do you think was the most important event of 2008? and

What was the most significant event in your life last year?

You have all Spring to answer if you wish.

9 responses so far. We are waiting for yours.

Leave answers on my email dbdacoba@aol.com or on my journal
http://vagabondjourneys.blogspot.com/. Thank you. DB