SILENT DREAMS - A WALTZ

SILENT DREAMS: A musical-within-a-musical

set in 1955, near Broadway.

It revolves around the death

of a long time Boarding House resident,

Jana Medrova, who played piano for the Silent Movies.

She leaves a diary revealing an affair with Valentino.

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The opening of the play

starts with Jana Medrova’s singing

(overhead in darkness)

What is your Silent Dream?

What is your soul longing for?

I have made up the entire story

out of my imagination

and written her a waltz.

Her verse goes like this:

Once upon a cinema mist,

I dreamed of being wantonly kissed,

By a turbaned sheik,

in a desert tryst,

But that was long, long, ago . . .

(chorus)

Silent Dreams,

All those Silent Dreams,

Melting your heart,

with the tenderest thought,

All those wonderful Silent Dreams.

(the boarding house)

The musical reflects my own longings.

~ ~ ~

Art imitating life.

Life imitating art.

Like this photo I took this morning.

===

For me, 

Life is never as easy

 -- nor as hard -- 

as I would like to make it --

just muddling my way

somewhere between

lobster bisque

and Drano.

which is why flowers help

And Rune Stones

So, today I drew two 

to receive some guidance

and try to balance myself.

I drew Sowelu, the Sun

Then Wunjo, Joy,

The Rune Stone messages

 for me today,

is to 

stop writing the Memoir.

My shoulder has tendonitis

and my right eye is red and blurry.

(Occupational hazards).

I feel like time is running out, though.

as does Jana Medrova.

she sings in the Coda:

But dreams are for yesterday

when time is running short,

so, remember to live,

to love, and forgive.

Follow your heart,

And you’ll find

such peace of mind

in those wild and precious

Silent Dreams. 

~~~

Maybe, in the greater scheme of things,

when the garden is bare,

and my workspace cluttered

putting a waltz called

Silent Dreams

on YouTube

is enough.

Do what you love

and that will be enough.

~ ~ ~

And maybe a waltz won’t save the world

or the whales

or the males,

But maybe it could.

~~~

I’m still a dreamer,

like all my characters.

What do you think?

Are we nothing more than the

choices we make?

I’m a skeptic, too, so I’m not sure.

More likely sound and fury

signifying nothing,

nothing at all.

~ ~ ~

My Six Word Memoir

(Have you heard of those?)

“Learning To Be A Good Loser”

Stay tuned . . .

SCROLL down for more posts

“Because of Love”

“I AM THE MUSIC”

Because of Love

I had a dream in which I

was playing an unbelievably

beautiful chord on the piano.

Two white notes were

played together as part of

the chord structure.

When I went to the piano

the next morning I tried

to recreate the sound,

but I couldn’t hear it.

Yet, I was haunted and finally

did compose a song and called it

Because of Love

~~~

Last week I began rereading SHUG,

the earlier version of the

“Confessions of a Blue Tomato” Memoir.

How authentic is this

writing, I mused, 

“This is the voice of love.”

Here’s the new Foreword,

"From the time I read Dear Store

(Rich’s Department Store)

to the reading of Driving Miss Daisy,

I’ve longed to write of the Atlanta I remember. 

Growing up in the 40’s,

a time of streetcars and blackouts,

the dusty playground of

Joel Chandler Harris

Elementary School

where soldiers from Fort McPherson

gave bouncy jeep rides

to school children during World War II. 

It’s a story about being an only child,

listening to the radio

collecting movie star photos,

and riding my bicycle to see

the Saturday movie Serials,

the smells of popcorn,

sticky floors and childish screams,

as the Mummy raised up out of his tomb

in the darkened Cascade Theater.

It’s a deep south '40's story of fresh peaches,

mimosa fronds, kudzu, Dutch Oven rolls,

Stone Mountain, Peachtree Street and the U.D.C

(United Daughters of the Confederacy).

It’s a city world, too,

growing up in the early days of television

and Stars of Tomorrow,

with the promise of an educational adventure

in drama at the University of Georgia.

And finally,

It’s a story in which our heroine

winds up as a gloved and girdled

girl of the 50’s,

miscast in the role of Betty Crocker.

~~~

Even so, it’s always been a story

about loving life

Amor Fati

(love your fate)

and loving to write about it

(Because of Love)

and write songs about.

This is a "crooner song"

for all of you who know that phrase.

I'd love for Frank Sinatra to sing it. 

stay tuned . . . 

scroll down for more posts

“I Am the Music”

“My Blue Tomato World”

====

I AM THE MUSIC

How much do I love to make music?

Back in the 80's I sold

 my wedding silver “Candlelight”

and bought a used Rhodes keyboard. 

I recently sold my Mother’s ring set

to buy my new Yamaha Keyboard.

Both times it was worth it.

I have a little love affair

with every song I’ve ever composed.

It’s born with those first few notes,

that linger and breathe

from a perfect space

between the intervals, 

with the perfect

amount of time

to take my breath away.

Sometimes with a rush of expectancy

or a gasp of delight

or a collapse into an undefinable sadness.

The musical phrase

that soon becomes the song,

expresses an emotion I’m feeling,

or have felt, 

but had repressed until I

heard that particular new combination.

I stay in love with chords, too!

D-flat major 7th, in particular.

I love to improvise in that key

my fingers gliding over all those black notes.

(good jazz title - all those black notes

stay tuned . . .)

I Am The Music

is a song I composed

from hearing a poem

The Musical Soul

written by a boy, Kris Kirk,

who loved music, and knew

he was dying.

I chose a Pop arrangement style

because he especially loved Metallica. 

Now, I've made a music video using

 photos of some of my old lead sheets,

guitar, flutes and other

music memorabilia.

I’ve added on-screen lyrics

throughout the song.

They express even more

my relationship with music.

“So grab a note, come fly with me,

and we will soar, like birds so free.”

Thanks for listening . . .

Scroll down for more blog Posts

“My Blue Tomato World”

and

“Was Sisyphus Happy?”

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