A little daydream

This morning I was on a rant. I wrote this long post about how much the media pisses me off and how there is so much more to cover and blahblahblah - but then I had to drop off a document to our ticket office.

To get from my office (on stage right of the Lyric Theatre) to the ticket office (on the opposite side of the building) I have walk through our upstairs lobby.

Right now there's nothing happening on stage, so it's dark everywhere and there's no one around. I decide on my way back to stop and take advantage of a small break in the day. Life's been crazy recently.

I remember making this walk a year ago as a new hire. I spent a lot of time up here thinking of how lucky I am to work in an actual theatre...not a vacuous "life-space" surrounded by other cubicles.

I sigh and give thanks for ending up where I did. God's good.

As I pause, I can make out light reflections off of the glass that encases years of memories hung on the lobby's walls. I pause and stare at our greatest moments of history. Carmen is halted - frozen in her classic habanera pose, hands clasped above her head. Next to her thirty-some odd people and an elephant appear shocked during the triumphant march in Aida.

I breathe in deeply and exhale hard, slowing my thoughts down. I like to stop and think out here. Something about being surrounded by art is healing - even if they are unfamiliar images suspended in time.

Reflected in the glass, I can see a faint light behind me wafting in through the balcony curtain. The work light must be up on stage.

There's time for daydreaming.

I ascend the steep steps and pop out into the empty theatre. Its silence is stilling. The energy of a year's worth of creativity likes to hang around. I can feel its phantom presence.

If I listen hard, I can almost hear the remnants of a soprano warming up backstage, her smooth voice trilling up and down and across and through space as she navigates each octave with precision.

If I focus my eyes long enough, I can almost see a lithe pair turning their heads in unison, finding a spot at the back of the room, trying to focus as their bodies become the air, floating out of the choreography Balanchine imagined and becoming transcendent.

Everyday I work amongst the trappings of beauty. In this theatre, the past and the future seem to coexist in one space. It is capable of containing all the memories of the past and the dreams of the future.

Sitting in the black stillness, I breathe in deeply again. I am blessed.

I frequently come up here to pray, and I guess that's because every time I walk through this theatre, I feel God's presence acutely. It's like a church dedicated to worshipping God's creative influences.

Oppositely, I can feel the hunger, drive, passion and desire of this cultural coliseum - its gladiators thrown down and torn apart by callous directors or spiteful critics with sharp pens.

This art may appear larger than life, but its actors are mere flesh and blood, long forgotten, now raising children in Sheboygan or beat up on in New York, their influences simply a flicker of enjoyment for a brief second in time.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

As I walk back down the stairs to finish my work and wrap up the original post for today, I realize how fleeting a moment of outrage is. Any musings of complaint would be ungrateful to a God that created all this. And right now, I'm a part of something timeless.

Today's Soundtrack: Lie In Our Graves - Dave Matthews Band - Crash