Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Empire State of Mind

Empire State of Mind

Anything can happen when you close your eyes. For instance, if you shut them really tight, you’d start to see tiny shimmering stars caught up in a background of black nothingness. Though now that I think about it, I wonder if that just happens with me?!! (Mental note to check that up.) But nonetheless, some of us see stars when we close our eyes, and if a physician called this a defect, it’s a state of mind we’d rather choose to keep.

The black nothingness is the pitch black hall before it all begins. Kind of like the quiet before it was said, ‘let there be light’. Then the stars begin to shimmer, taking shape as bright lights, a blend of fine colors and sounds, velvet cushions and curtains, orchestrated music, all embroidered into a two hour experience. That’s what I see when I close my eyes, and for those suspended hours in time, it doesn’t matter if I’m thirty years old or still ten, I’d still believe in magic. Still believe in Coltrane, in Cat on a hot tin roof, in Annie, in Nigh, Mother, or The King Must dance naked…
This is empire state of my mind; this is art and theater.

I saw the movie “Everybody’s Fine” yesterday – it didn’t turn out to be your regular valentine experience, but tickets were sold out for “Valentine’s day”. The movie was kind of sad, but you’d leave feeling that you actually experienced something in the past two hours. The few short laughs aside, I thought it had essence- somebody actually thought relatively deep before penning the script. Somebody was creative in how he passed across his simple messages. And the conversations were a little bit more than the usual punch lines Hollywood is known for. In all, they acknowledged the fact that their audience might just have an intelligent mind that could maybe do with a little bit of tweaking. Well you might argue that we go for art for the sake of forgetting briefly the more important things of life. We truly need a break from the ugly truths of our daily experiences at times- quite true. But for the few remaining who go for art for the sake of a quiet appreciation, we thank Robert De niro and his team whilst we shed the few tiny tears when David died. Especially when the girl at the art gallery revealed that last painting. Gosh, classic – you don’t forget that in a while.