When we returned from an HSO (Hartford Symphony Orchestra) Concert) I fell into the sleep of heavenly rest, some churches actually identify with such a tom- fool idea!
The concert was so beautifully orchestrated as to be mesmeric—hypnotic enough for us to pause for breath, then rush over to our favorite Asian food restaurant to be spoiled by good food and better wine. Now quite besotted, I fell into deep sleep— enough to awaken my soul to dream impossibilities alive.
I now understand the experience of near-death experiences. When we arrived home later in the cold, all we could do was fiddle with the TV to naught, then roll into bed where I slept the sleep of insatiability, a sleep of such vulnerability, a sleep from which only LOVE will arise.
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Yes, some will oversleep!
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So do lovers when enchanted by the music of Prokofiev—cold, precise, and alluring all at once. A “theatrical concert” this one was called—an art form as delicate and fierce as a memoir in which the author/star is born into a world of family dysfunction, fierce enough to be life-threatening to young lovers/LOVE itself. You know them well: Romeo and Juliet…..
The full symphony orchestra posed as the “backdrop” for a young black-skinned lover/tenor, Romeo no less. And Juliet, a slim, barefoot, tremblingly childlike ashen-white woman, desperately racing about in hide-and-seek fashion as she appeared suddenly in a balcony, then tucked into an onstage bed, moved according to the storyline. I froze waiting/hoping for the familiar lines: “Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”
The musical story of a romance between two lovers so hypnotically attracted that they shocked to life an entire culture, not to mention erupting the slumber of dysfunctional families, even whole societies struggling to be/stay fully awake like these two frantic young lovers grasping at embodied love within the context of acutely rigidified familial and cultural dysfunctions.
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I tell you it’s more difficult than trying to find your own identity —not through another but within another. And yet unflinchingly we reach, and fail, and reach again, for this is LOVE.
