Well hello, there, friends. Thursday was the summer solstice, one of my favorite days. I sat in the park and read, swung on the swings, and walked around until nightfall. The color of the sunlight in the evening, the absence of time brought about by the absence of darkness, and the lazy heat combined to pull humanity out of its singular, isolated self. At least, that's what they did to me. I felt, with all the cheesy glory that sentences like this encompass, connected to a deep river of life. It helped that I was sitting at a picnic table, reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," which is about a girl named Francie, growing up poor and Irish in Williamsburg. My grandmother, Frances, grew up poor and Irish in Sunset Park. When the book came out in 1943, her brother sent her a copy from the army, saying "I think you'll recognize this story." It also helped that I heard a lecture by Cornel West on the radio today, and when you listen to Cornel West for an hour, the whole "river of life" thing seems less like a cliché and more like a revolutionary statement.
I'm not going to preach about community, because Dr. West is approximately one million times better at it than I am. Also, this is an opera blog for the love of Izagi ed Izanami! I want to talk about theater, and what happens to an audience when theater is at its witchcrafty, alchemical best. What does this have to do with midsummer's night? What on earth does it have to do with Cornel West? Read on, brave river of humans, and find out.
