I find meaning everywhere. Not just in books and music and movies and myths, but in moments I witness as I stroll through this world.
Meaning. Clues to Life. Reassurance. Omens good & bad. All over the place.
When I was all of twenty-four, I moved to NYC for the first time, pretty much sight unseen. I had stood on the tarmac at JFK once when I was seventeen and looked out to see the silhouette of the Twin Towers in the distance, but that was as close as I had ever come to Gotham. I stared at those towers like they were a distant castle in an enchanted kingdom. I ached to move there.
I had wanted to move to NYC for as long as I could remember. The first time I saw the original King Kong, around 5 years old, as I watched my favorite simian stomp his way through the Big Apple, I thought to myself "I am going to live there when I grow up".
I never really grew up, but I did get older. Went to college. Found theatre. became a theatre major my third year. Graduated at 24, went to the Barn Theatre and got my Equity card, got a tour for a dance show to Japan, came back home to San Jose, California, loaded up my little Hyundai Excel, and headed East.
I got there on Halloween.
And the shit hit the fan in every way possible. I was broke. Alone. And for the only prolonged time in my life (so far) depressed. I felt like I had somehow fucked up my journey. Like my spirit guides had all abandoned me. I was the poorest, and skinniest, I have ever been. The cheapest thing I could do for entertainment was go to the MET, which was free for people who lived in the city.
And I came upon this painting of a girl, lost. Like crazy lost. No hope. What the fuck will I do now?
It cut me to the core. I had no idea what the painting was of, only that I felt exactly like the girl. Lost. Confused. Doomed. Turned out to be a painting of Joan of Arc, right when she hears the voices for the first time. It's intense.
I found meaning. Clarity. Beauty wrapped in sorrow. I was still depressed and lost, but a tiny bit less lonely.
Recently, we went to Disneyland. I never went there growing up so it's always held a sort of sacred magic.
Never is not quite accurate. I did go there when I was about four, for one day, with my father, shortly after he and my mom split up. I remember the Haunted Mansion, the rocket ride, and Pirates of the Caribbean. It was the last time going there until I was seventeen. The Mix of having gone once with a father who I would not see again until I was twenty-eight, mixed with not going again for my entire childhood, gave the whole place a mystique that remains to this very day. I walk into the Magic Kingdom, and I am good, the world is just and kind and fair.
However, on the last trip, I noticed something about Pirates.
It's really a descent into Hell. Not in a bad way. More like I'm Dante, and the ghost of Virgil is taking me on a tour of the Inferno. We start on a boat. We float through a bayou at dusk. A banjo plays in a beat up old shack. I imagine an old pirate, playing one last tune before checking out. We enter darkness. A talking skull warns us we are about to see some weird shit. Then we drop off a waterfall, go through a cave full of strange colors, drop down another waterfall, and come upon a beach with a couple of skeletons. A seagull sits on the head of one, a crab waves its claws at another. I am fairy certain the gull and crab house the souls that once filled those skeletons, and they are realizing they are now dead and stuck on a beach in Hell. Next, we pass a weird bar, full of more skeletons. A pair of them play chess, stuck in stalemate forever. Another sits at the bar, holding up a bottle that pours clear liquid into into the skeletal mouth. The liquid turns red as it flows into the empty body. And the thirsty bag of bones never quinces its thirst. A Pirate Tantalus. Next, we meet another skeleton, trying to escape an eternal storm.
And then shit gets really weird. We float into a room full of treasure. A well dressed skeleton lays in bed, looking through a magnifying glass at nothing, searching for a clue like a spooky Pirate Sherlock Holmes. And a voice tells us we are now cursed for having seen the treasure. Then we pass a skeletal torso in a glass case, that becomes human as we pass it.
And now we are with the dead, lost in their memories, playing out their mistakes and misdeeds over and over and over. Battles. Late night drinking parties where we end up talking to cats and pigs, or scream at each other, or tie things to frightened people whose homes we have just destroyed. On and on, each scene stranger than the one before. Finally, we go through a burned up ship, past some shockingly drunk pirated shooting at each other while surrounded by boxes of gun powder, and then the final thing we see is a rather detached, lost Jack Sparrow mumbling about how we are all pirates.
And a voice tells us Dead Men Do Tell Tales.
And we, the Dead, are sent back to the world.
Maybe I read too much into things, but that's just how I'm wired.
Today, I find meaning in my morning walk. In my coffee. In writing this blog.
Now I am off, to explore America via a pilot that is a a variation of an old script of mine called "Lunatics and Assholes".
Perhaps I shall get it made, and some young lost soul will watch it and find meaning.
Perhaps.
And now, a tune for your listening pleasure. It's the first track from this album I love so much when I was in college, a collection of Disney tunes reimagined by Hal Willner and performed by some musical luminaires. This is Stay Awake, by Suzzane Vega. It's creepy and cool.
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