The Scared is scared

"The conflictive pressures and confrontational tensions that lie beneath a sung script...remain uninvestigated and, worse, disappear behind an infantile indication of the lyric.  What we hear and witness, too often, are charaded performances of what is being sung.  In general, this may be considered the root cause of the physical self-consciousness that afflicts cross-over actors, dancers, and, sadly, concert singers when they first begin a life in song.  My thesis, then, is this:  Concern yourself only with the words and the music of what you sing and you have joined the audience by becoming the reactor to, rather than the creator of the song.  Simply stated, the subject and the predicate have reversed themselves:  the song sings you."

David Craig, "On Performing Sondheim:  A Little Night Music Revisited," Stephen Sondheim:  A Casebook




The Scared is scared of the things you like...

"Life is process, not goal; the moment is all that can be enjoyed."  Your own thoughts may well be the closest you'll ever be to experiencing a moment within the actual moment.

Investigate the conflictive pressures and confrontational tensions that lie beneath.

Receive.  Cultivate curiosity.

You sing your song.

Libraries, Heroes, Goddesses & Temptresses, and Things Found Along the Way

Moyers: Then what does love have to do with morality?

Campbell: Violates it.

Moyers: Violates it?

Campbell: Yes.  Insofar as love expresses itself, it is not expressing itself in terms of the socially approved manners of life.  That’s why it is all so secret.  Love has nothing to do with social order.  It is a higher spiritual experience than that of socially organized marriage.

Moyers: When we say God is love, does that have anything to do with romantic love?  Does mythology ever link romantic love and God?

Campbell: That’s what it did do.  Love was a divine visitation, and that’s why it was superior to marriage.  That was the troubadour idea.  If God is love, well then, love is God.  Meister Eckhart said, “Love knows no pain.”  And that’s exactly what Tristan meant when he said, “I’m willing to accept the pains of hell for my love.”

Moyers: But you’ve been saying that love involves suffering.

Campbell: That is the other idea.  Tristan was experiencing love—Meister Eckhart was talking about it.  The pain of love is not the other kind of pain, it is the pain of life.  Where your pain is, there is your life, you might say.

Moyers: There’s that passage in Corinthians where Paul says, “Love beareth  all things, endureth all things.”

Campbell: That’s the same thing…

Moyers: So joy and pain are in love.

Campbell: Yes.  Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love.  The stronger the love, the more the pain.

Moyers: But love bears all things.

Campbell: Love itself is a pain, you might say—the pain of being truly alive.

"Daphne, it's okay; just calm down. I mean, when all this is over we're just gonna--"

"There is no 'when this is over!' There's no tomorrow, no next week, no next year - there's nothing until he comes out of there and I know he's okay!" ~Daphne Moon Crane

(For when I just don't believe it myself)

I am a dancer because Fast Pat says so.

I am young because Karen says so.

I am subtle and cerebral because Chuck says so.

I am pretty because Zack says so.

I am "braver than [I] believe, stronger than [I] seem, and smarter than [I] think" because Molly and Christopher Robin say so.

Just kidding! I'm back!

"I spend so much time trying to control my life.  I thought it meant that I was strong, but I was just afraid... I never shed a tear.  I was proud of that.  All these years I never let myself feel it... I could avoid it all before I met you.  I had no one in my life, and now I think of those people, and I think of you.  Any one of them—it could have been you."

~Bones

When I can't facebook or tweet...

...I return here, apparently.

"If she is fat, I can’t help but think, what does that make me? What does that make the vast majority of women? I think we all know the answer to this, it’s only so brutally put on display when a woman whom we’ve come to expect will remain always pixie-like and slender comes into a more voluptuous figure. We know that, in the eyes of people who would call Christina fat, we’re disgusting. We’re not worthy of being proud of our bodies, or showing off as she does, or feeling that we can be sexy and desired."

Read more at http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/every-time-someone-calls-christina-aguilera-fat-an-angel-bursts-into-flames/#XW8hmt4TfcTIisgX.99

See ya in six months?

The Kids Are All Right

This was lovingly stolen from a friend's fb status.

Overheard on my flight last night...

Woman: Elizabeth, do you want a baby brother or a baby sister?
Elizabeth: (silence)
Woman: Well?
Elizabeth: (sigh) I just want some big girl panties, OK?
Woman: What if it is a baby brother?
Elizaebth: I'll play with him.
Woman: You will?
Elizabeth: Yes. I'll share my baby dolls with him.
Woman: OH, NO...you can't do that. Little boys can't play with baby dolls.
Elizabeth: (long pause) HE WON'T HAVE ANY HANDS?!!?!??!?!

Thank you, Elizabeth, for being young and clueless about stereotypes - and having way more sense than your travel companion.

And thank you, Leese, for sharing.