MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE

May 29, 2013

Vagabond Journey No. 2, 004

----------------------------------

The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best.

(Henry Van Dyke)

***********************************

Hello Linda

******************

The other day I heard an opera broadcast on the radio. (It was The Masked Ball by Verdi, for those of you who know opera.) The performance was from a provincial opera company in Italy. Though some were better than others they were not the best singers in the world. But they all sang with an earnest passion and love for the music. And that alone made it an enjoyable experience.

Listening to them I felt a kinship with them and their lives. I may not have been the best actor in the world but I was good enough to be appreciated by my peers and sometimes even by the critics. But the one remarkable blessing that stands as a pinnacle in my memory is the joy of performing. For the performing artist a performance is a time of being totally alive. For the actor the place he occupies on the stage is his own private tree branch from which to sing his song.

I happened to run into a group of actors from the local theatre during a short break and realized how much I miss being with those people. It made me feel like the show was going on and I was on the other side of a closed, locked door.

But there will be no more acting for me until I get myself out of debt, my body repaired and my address changed to a place in the cosmos where theatre lives. In the meantime I write blogs and stories, paint pictures, am solitary, alone, lonely and sometimes depressed.

Draw me looking ahead but color me blue.

********************

Dana Bate

Vagabond Journeys

Never Give Up

********************