The Magic Flute

Synchronicity blesses me again.
Yesterday morning I was musing to myself about the funny miracles occurring all around me, and also on the fucked up little anti-miracles I sometimes experience, and have lately. I thought, I want some little miracle of my own today, please. I want some remarkable happy occurrence of meaningful coincidence. Not because I need it, mind you, just because I am greedy enough to wish for an abundant life, so that I can overflow to others, so that I can gloat smugly about the power the divine can exercise in the world when it is invited to act. When I am bragging about my amazing magic powers or psychic perception, I am preaching my faith. I am proclaiming the truth of the nature of reality as I see it. I am sharing the reality of this very natural power with any and all who care to perceive and make use of it. Heed if you will.
My life runs over with miracles, unasked for and unexpected. My life reads like a very weird storybook, full of deus ex machina that would be obvious to the point of clumsiness were they not in fact what really happened.
Here is what happened yesterday.
I took a message for my boss from a lady who said she had some free theatre tickets to give him. I jokingly asked her if she had some to give me too. She said very possibly, and how many people would I like to bring along? I had an escort in mind and said so, and she said she would get back to me. My first choice was unavailable (alas!) and so I had to make do with r, whom I have begun to think I am actually dating, since I see her every day lately. We even managed wrangle up a ticket for her bf.
C, I am sorry you missed it. It was beautiful.
The show was Amadeus, which was also ‘coincidental’ because I have been thinking of Mozart since a week ago waking in the obscenely early morning, being unable to fall back asleep, and listening to The Barber of Seville on French CBC until I could again. Later that day he came up in conversation. He got into my head and kind of sat there. It seemed fitting that I get to see this play.
It was brilliant. The actor who played Salieri made effortless and convincing changes back and forth between a palsied, wheelchair bound old man and an artist and aristocrat in the prime of life.
It tells the story of Salieri himself, far more intimately than Mozart’s own. Salieri begins as a devoutly pious man, a great artist in his own right. He had made a bargain with God for his fame in exchange for glorification and worship in song, and service to man.
He is doing very well until along comes upstart Mozart, wearing blue jeans with his frock coat, and blows through Vienna like a hurricane, impressing the court with his virtuosity and offending every member of it with his immature antics.
Salieri is disgusted with him. He is also entranced with his music, and bitterly jealous of it. There is a scene where Salieri has composed a march in Mozart’s honor. Mozart sits down and plays it from memory without glancing at the music, then creates a cheerful, uplifting variation, while Salieri, who hates him already, stands burning with wrath. Mozart is just having fun, and invites Salieri to try a variation of his own, which he refuses.
I think this is one of the key moments of the whole play, more telling than all Salieri’s poetic speeches explaining his motives for assassinating Mozart’s career. It is a moment I have faced myself, and have made the wrong choice more than once. We artists are all here to uplift humanity, and that includes each other. When we begin to compare ourselves to one another we lose sight of our own unique powers. Salieri had the opportunity to grow past his jealousy of Mozart and to learn from him, but chose otherwise. He was trapped in desires, conventional thinking and fear.
He curses God for giving the gift of pure divine expression to someone so crude and crass as Mozart. For making Mozart his "Magic Flute" and not himself. He declares war on God through Mozart. He swears to block the divine in the world as best he is able.
Of course he fails, but he makes Mozart suffer horrible deprivation. He uses all his influence at court to interfere with his career and prospects. Mozart eventually dies, one thinks more from exhaustion at the futility of pushing against the invisible wall he cannot understand, than any reported cause. His music lives on long after his death while Salieri’s becomes unfashionable within his own lifetime.
A few things struck me about this. Salieri got what he had asked God for, and gave what he had agreed. He continued to receive the blessing of fame long after he betrayed his side of the bargain. He cursed at God for being denied the gift of divine music, but before that jealously took him he was a devout and much loved man who expressed God in his work to help poor artists, in his teaching and sharing the gift of love of music.
True love for art is every bit as much a divine gift as genius at it. It is certainly often more pleasure than genius is. He was the only person at the time who understood Mozart’s music for what it was, what it would be known as later. He is blessed with the ability to perceive the manifestation of the creative power of God, but not to be it’s instrument. How different it could have been. How poor Wolfgang must have longed for such understanding from any human being, as he understood himself. How that understanding might have further elevated his music, and the world thereby! But would it?
I have, in earlier post, spoken of the transcendent power of real suffering. Pain and anguish, physical and spiritual, serve to strip away the barriers between ourselves and our greater awareness. When it is properly attuned to at least. I very well know the truth of this. As Mozart’s life became progressively more unbearable, his works became more transcendent, more mystical, lovely and sublime. Would he not, if he had received due recognition and rewards during his lifetime, have become corrupted by it? If he had been well fed and comfortable, insulated by fame and wealth, would he have lost the divine madness of inspiration?
One could ask the same question of many of the great ones unrecognized by their contemporaries.
It seems that art is birthed from and spurred on by the need to make sense of tribulation, to have ones own particular suffering understood. If you can ache and still love and honor what hurts you, suffer and still celebrate God, and dance alone in the rubble of a shattered life to music crafted from the agonized moans of the human heart, you are blessed with God’s greatest gift. It is freely available to all, but rejected by most.
Blessed lessons these are for one who has recently suffered some rather outrageous attempts at character assassination herself. M, remember this. Jealousy cannot destroy the truth.
And this beautiful gift was casually tossed into my hand by a stranger on the phone, simply because I had the audacity to ASK for it when it occurred to me. Had I been more timid, more polite, less nosy and presumptuous, I would never have even known the opportunity existed.
Ask and ye shall receive, I keep telling you guys.
It is not some special power I alone possess. For all I am constantly accused of arrogance and self-aggrandizement, I really do not claim to be better than anyone. I was raised with humility being an important value. Like all important values I was taught at the time I scorn it, but that’s not the point. I WANT to be special, I used to think I was, but in fact I now believe myself to be perfectly ordinary. This is because I see magic as quite ordinary, natural, and logical. If you have the cojones to look the universal powers in the eyes and say,
"This is what I want, and what I feel would best equip me to serve my purpose, which only helps You Guys, may I have it?"
you will get it. You will probably get it in a wildly different manifestation than you want or expect, but you will get it. I am also conceited enough to believe that my prayers for guidance are answered regularly, and that by virtue of this I am empowered and expected to act for the furtherment of my personal goals, since as I am a priestess they are connected and intrinsic to the greater divine plan. I really think this. However I also really think the same applies to anyone, and if you try to get in tune with it, you will see what I mean.
It is what we do with these gifts that damns or redeems us.
Speaking of miracles, here is another.
My lost friend. Poor B. He is found again, he is finding himself again.
Last week he came to see me at work. It was the first time I had seen him in months. I was afraid, since the last time I had seen him, which I speak of in a much earlier post, he was a real mess. This was also the day that my real problems with he-whose-name-we-do-not-speak began their final nasty descent. Boy, only a week ago you guys.
Anyway, B was still on the street, still messed up and using, but more lucid and clear. We spent my lunch hour together and I was able to tell him some things and ask him some things that had been burning in me this whole time. I really hate unresolved misunderstandings. I was able to give him a hug and tell him that I still cared about him and would always be his friend. That was good. I bolted from our last meeting and I’m sure that must have made him feel lousy, even if he deserved it and I had little choice. I said what encouraging things I could but cautioned myself not to get my hopes up for his recovery, but I could not resist singing a returning spell in his ear as we parted.
Yesterday, right before close, he came to my work again.
He told me he was working at the construction site down the street, and that he had been in detox for a week.
Thank you Isis for prayers answered. Let this stick.
there is a third miracle as well, but i will not speak of it here.