You know how they say that folks who don’t study history are condemned to repeat it? Well, today I learned that it really doesn’t take all that long! In fact, we may very well witness history repeating itself again!
Huh?
OK. I read that just recently, <i>¿Jeb! [last name unknown] said the following in response to Donald Trump’s fearmongering:
Jeb Bush on Trump: ‘A Republican will never win by striking fear in people’s hearts’
Ummm, ¿Jeb! ? Where’ve you been all my life? Or all of yours!
Perhaps some introductions are in order!
The Bro and the Bad Man Google Image
Rummy and The Dick
And from your very own Daddy-O, H.W. and his hatchet man,, Lee Attwater:
Oooh, ooh! Don’t forget St. Ronnie!
Ain’t it hilarious that he started his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi? You know — Where those three civil rights workers were murdered for the crime of registering black voters?
And, of course, that architect of “The Southern Strategy,” Tricky Dick!
(For the young ‘uns, Wikipedia describes it this way:
The Southern strategy refers to a Republican Party strategy in the late 20th century of gaining political support for presidential candidates in the Southern United States by appealing to regional racial tensions and history of segregation.)
But you’re probably right, ¿Jeb! Republicans never get elected by appealing to fear.
This is a week for repeats here on FiftyFourAndAHalf.com. Sorry.
But when I learned a little while ago that actor Omar Sharif died of a heart attack today, well, I thought I’d re-run this story, which isn’t mine, and which I love.
It’s a story that was told to me by Omar Sharif. Sadly, it was in an interview on TV that I saw many years ago, and not in person.
“I was sitting there on the set of Lawrence,” said Omar of his first meeting with co-star and newbie actor, Peter O’Toole. And this tall blond man I’d never seen before walked up to me and introduced himself.”
“‘I’m Peter, Peter O’Toole,’ he told me.
“I’m Omar Sharif,” I responded reaching out to shake his hand.
And then Peter responded, with an impish, Irish grin on his face:
“‘Nobody is named ‘Omar.’ I shall call you ‘Fred.'”
And with a toss of his head and a resounding laugh, Fred Sharif concluded: “and he did!”
You’re going to call me WHAT??? Photo Credit, Irish Times
As the daughter, granddaughter and sister of Freds, I love this story.
RIP, Fred. I hope you are off riding camels again with Peter.
As I mentioned last night, after I rudely posted a link to one of my old blog posts in a comment on Art’s blog, Pouring My Art Out, I started chatting with my blogging buddy Trend, of TrentLewin.com about that piece. I told him that in an exercise for my memoir writing class, I had to write the same story from two different points of view. The link I posted was to the first version of that story. Trend and I figured it would be fun for me to post both pieces.
Six Admissions judges from London’s Central School of Speech and Drama met at the Rathskeller, a bar in New Haven, Connecticut, to discuss the afternoon’s auditions of prospective American students in April 1974.
Google Image
“How did you mates fair? We had four who were bloody awful,” said Nigel, after ordering a pint and sitting down. Nigel, along with Charles and Anna, was one of three judges on the second panel. The others joined their colleagues and smiled at the three members of the first panel already seated at the table.
“There’s one ace in our lot,” said James, speaking for the first panel. “We all agree he should be admitted.”
Anna rushed in: “We had one that was quite memorable.”
The group quickly pushed aside the folders of the rejects; no chat was needed. All six knew the criteria for admission and talent was a prerequisite. They went on to the three applicants who would be offered slots in September’s class.
“Now tell us about this other one” James said opening the folder they’d kept in reserve. “Do we have another offer to make to Elyse?”
“Well, she is,” Anna said, smiling and showing Elyse’s picture, “quite photogenic, I’d imagine she’d be good on film. On the whole, though, delivery of her comedy piece wasn’t good.”
“Her timing,” said Nigel, “was a bit off.”
“It was at first,” added Charles smirking. “But later she showed real promise.”
“Her Juliet speech was spot on. And she looked like Juliet, which always helps,” Anna continued.
“Well, she’s quite young,” said James, “Only 17. She should look the part! Can she sing?”
“She belted ‘Adelaide’s Lament,’ a song that makes me queasy. She performed it well, though, comfortably. She has a strong singing voice that could be developed nicely with additional vocal training.”
“OK,” said Natalie, speaking up for the first time. “It sounds like she did an acceptable audition, but not a stellar one. That makes her borderline in my book. Why was she so memorable?”
“Because,” said James, trying to not laugh over his own punchline as Anna and Charles began guffawing. “Fuck me if, on her way out, she didn’t walk into the broom closet and close the door!”
“She didn’t!!”
“And she stayed inside there,” added Anna, wiping tears from her eyes. “She was in there for eons. She must have not known what to do.”
James went on, “She finally slunk out and said rather sheepishly ‘uhhh, that’s a broom closet.’ She hung her head and walked out the proper door, poor dear.”
“If she’d come out singing and dancing,” chuckled Nigel, “I would have suggested she skip training and head straight for Broadway.”
They added Elyse’s folder to the pile of on the left.
The other day when I rudely posted a link to one of my old blog posts in a comment on Art’s blog, Pouring My Art Out, I started chatting with my blogging buddy Trend, of TrentLewin.com about that piece. I told him that in an exercise for my memoir writing class, I had to write the same story from two different points of view. Trend and I figured it would be fun for me to post both pieces.
So tonight, I am re-posting the story of how all my youthful dreams came crashing down on me in a broom closet. Tomorrow night, I will tell the same story, from someone else’s side.
This exercise was really helpful in the class, by the way. It helped me look at the same story I’d told for years, but with new eyes. And it was a lot of fun to imagine the other side. Without further ado, here it is:
Door Number Two!
The thing about dreams is that the crushing, the squelching, the termination of them is so much better in retrospect than when it actually happens.
At 17, I just knew I was going to be an actress. A stage actress (because, don’t cha know, film work is not true acting. ) And I made that choice even before I realized that the camera brings out the psycho in me.
Now, I was very serious about this dream. Of course I took my high school’s acting classes. And, all snark aside, they were really good. The Players were renown throughout the area for the professional quality of its high school actors. And the accolades were well deserved.
Me? Was I the star? Was I the ingénue lead in all the productions during my high school years? Was there a reason for my hubris? Did my classmates look at me, remember my face and say to each other “someday we will remember when the very highly talented Miss Elyse went sledding outside our Algebra class (with that other fab actress, Ray) when she was supposed to be writing her math problems on the blackboard – because now,” sigh, “she’s a STAR.” Oops, no, I mean they’d think “because now she is a highly successful stage ACTress.”
Uh, no they didn’t. I was invariably an extra in those acclaimed productions. At best I got a line or two. But I had heart. And in the theatRE, that’s all you need, right?
“There are no small parts, only small actors.”
Well, I was NOT a small actor. I just got small parts. And I was short and thin. So I was small. Shit.
But I DID get an audition. Yup! I had an audition in April of 1974, the spring of my senior year, for the Central School of Speech and Drama, an acting school in London.
Google Image because I don’t have any pictures of my own.
Now, I lived ONE hour outside of New York, so training in NYC might have been a wee bit easier to manage. But hey, this was a dream, remember? And I wanted London: The Globe, The West End, Masterpiece TheatRE (even if it was done on film, it didn’t seem like it). I was ready to take the first step in my path.
My audition was held in a building at Yale University, which in itself was pretty intimidating.
I performed my comedy bit first, a monologue from a comedy so obscure that I have blotted it totally from my brain. I sang “Adelaide’s Lament” under the guidance of my friend Sue, who actually played Adelaide in our school’s production of Guys and Dolls.
I delivered my Juliet speech – hey, what do you want, Lady Macbeth? I was 17!!! I chose one that is rarely performed, the one where Juliet is about to take the sleeping potion and is seeing her cousin Tybalt’s ghost:
O, look! methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
Seeking out Romeo,
That did spit his body Upon a rapier’s point:
Stay, Tybalt, stay! (I loved that line)
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
I drank the potion and collapsed on the floor in the best Juliet evah.
I was a much better Juliet than Marsha Brady. Much. Of course, there are no Google Images of me.
I thanked the three faculty judges, repeated my name, made sure they had my completed application and my picture (although how could they forget me?) I turned and walked to the door to leave.
Only there were two doors.
I opened the one on the right, walked through it and closed the door behind me.
It was a broom closet.
What do I do now, I wondered.
There was no script. No stage directions. No help of any kind. I considered staying in the closet, but knew that eventually I had to exit stage left.
After a minute that lasted forever, I re-opened the closet door and slunk out, saying a line I haven’t heard in too many successful plays:
“That’s the broom closet.”
I opened the other door and left the room, closing my dream back in the room with the judges.
I know that if I’d just gone out singing and dancing, well, this chapter would be the opening scene of my life story. Maybe it still is. Cause it hasn’t been at all bad.
Jacob’s good friend Kate left this evening for Italy. She and her Mom planned on visiting Rome and Florence, and forgo Venice. At dinner one night a couple of months ago, we told her this story. They added Venice to their itinerary. I hope they love it as much as we did. I wish we were on that plane, too.
(This is a re-post.)
* * *
Eight-year old Jacob looked at me as if I’d gone crazy. He stopped in his tracks, put his hands on his hips, tilted his head and spoke to me in a tone that was a prelude of the teen years to come. Looking back, he had some justification.
You see, I was talking to him about Florence, Italy. I was telling him some of the things I’d learned about the city and its history in preparation for a visit we’d be taking there in about two weeks. I finished up my quick summary of the history, the art, the architecture, the famous people who’d lived there. I then offered an enticement.
“You know what, Jacob,” I said. “I read that most Italians find Florence to be their most beautiful city.”
“Mom,” my son said with his hands on his hips and his lips pursed, “how can any city be more beautiful than Venice?”
Because like me, Jacob had fallen in love with Venice when we visited that city a year earlier.
We actually went to Venice twice.
In August 1998, John, Jacob and I had gone to visit American friends who were staying in Trieste, which is on the other side of the Aegean Sea. Venice could be easily reached via a short train ride.
Truthfully, I wasn’t all that excited. Venice wasn’t really high on my list of places I had to see while we were in Europe. But we were so close, so of course going seemed like a great idea. We’d spend a day there, and then on other trips I could see Rome and Florence — the Italian cities I really wanted to visit.
Our train was delayed by a couple of hours, and the evening train cancelled. So we had four hours to see the city. It would be plenty, I was sure.
Until, that is, I stepped off the train and found that I really had been transported — we’d landed in a place that was nothing like I’d imagined. A truly magical place.
I’d read that it feels like you’re back in time because there are no cars in Venice.
I’d heard about the light in Venice, that there is nothing quite like it. The buildings, mostly built of marble of different hues, reflect the water and the water reflects the buildings. They both seem to dance at the slightest breeze.
I’d learned about the architecture in Venice, a mixture of European, North African, Middle-Eastern with hints of Asian, styles and materials brought back from the known world by the traders and explorers that built the city and made it fabulously wealthy.
But nothing, nothing, had prepared me for the impact that the beautiful city had on my heart — from the moment we stepped off the train.
Our afternoon gave me a much too quick taste of the magic.
With two young boys and a baby in tow, our first stop was for a late lunch — pizza on the Grand Canal.
Jacob and Marco, who just couldn’t believe that he’d missed the ice cream boat!
We crammed as much as we could into an afternoon. August 31st, when everything was mobbed. We spent time in St. Marco’s Square, visited the Basilica and the Doge’s Palace, crossed the Bridge of Sighs into the Doge’s prison.
When we got back to the train station, I made John promise me that Venice would be our next destination. An afternoon was not nearly enough time, and my heart was breaking at leaving the magical city.
We started planning to go back to Venice the instant we arrived back home to Switzerland. Jacob had a 5-day weekend in early October. So we booked train tickets, a hotel, and got ready to go back. We arrived at dawn, which is when all the guidebooks tell you to arrive in Venice. Because the colors from the sunrise reflecting on the water and on the buildings that line the canals. It is a sight that I will not even try to describe. Indeed, I’ve never seen a photograph or read a description that did it justice.
Our visit was filled with beauty, from start to finish. But it is the last night I want to tell you about.
We had done as much touring as you can do with a 7-year old. A few museums, a lot of churches. We climbed the campaniles (bell towers) of many churches to get the perfect view of the city that all three of us had fallen for. We saw masterpieces by Titian, Tintoretto and others, still hanging where they were meant to hang — in the churches of Venice, and in the unique light of Venice.
We went on a gondola ride, of course. It was wonderful AND schlocky. We saw Marco Polo’s house.
But on the last night, Venice captured my heart, and Jacob’s.
We’d finished dinner, and wandered back into St. Mark’s Square. Jacob wanted to climb the Campanile, the bell tower.
Jacob with the St Marco’s Square behind him. The Campanile standing tall behind him.
We’d climbed the Campanile once already, but Jacob wanted to see the city from that prospect one more time on our last night, hoping to view the city as the lights came up on the buildings.
We loved the view, but were surprised to find that the buildings weren’t illuminated. We climbed back down into the square, which was completely empty except for the three of us. Two rival orchestras that were setting up outside of two restaurants on opposite sides of the Square.
The three of us wandered into the center of the piazza when it happened.
Behind us, one of the orchestras began playing a Viennese waltz. The sound transformed the square into our own personal ballroom. The light was fading, but soft lights around the square glowed on the Basilica, the clock tower. Jacob took my hand, bowed, and walked me into the middle of the square. John, the non-dancer, gave Jacob and I our moment.
My son and I — we danced. Just the two of us, all over the cobbled square.
The instant the first orchestra had played its last notes, the orchestra on the other side began.
I could have danced all night, from My Fair Lady. It was true — I could have.
As people began to fill the Square, we thanked both orchestras and headed back down to the Grand Canal, for a last stroll past the Doge’s palace, Vivaldi’s church and the other buildings that had seen millions of people like us come and go.
We crossed a small bridge and stopped to look across the canal at the Church of Santa Maria della Salute, and the golden ball atop the customs house. We gazed back at the gondolas covered and berthed for the night. We turned towards the Bridge of Sighs, where prisoners crossed from the Doge’s palace into the Doge’s prison and sighed at their last breath of freedom.
Jacob stood on that bridge with tears running down his cheeks as he looked at the beauty that surrounded us.
“I can’t believe we have to leave Venice,” he said, his heart breaking along with mine and John’s.
Photo credit: Photozonly.com
della Salute by Claude Monet. He apparently liked Venice, too.
Was Florence more beautiful than Venice? I don’t honestly know. We spent nearly a week in Florence, but it rained so hard that we literally never could see the views and the vistas of that city. But if you’re going to have a vacation where it pours, I highly recommend Florence. There are one or two things to look at.
But Venice. Ah, Venice. I have never been anywhere like Venice, a place I really wasn’t that anxious to visit. It captured my heart, and John’s and especially Jacob’s. It is a magical place. Words and pictures, even by Monet, cannot capture its beauty or how it made me feel.
***
I was inspired to finally write this story by DJ Matticus of The Matticus Kingdom who wrote this lovely post. In the last year or two, John of Johnbalaya sent me back to Venice not too long ago, as did Renee of Renee Johnson Writes.
Somehow, I’m always happy to go back. Magic and Venice. Yup. I’m willing to do either any time!
Ain’t it hilarious that he started his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi? You know — Where those three civil rights workers were murdered for the crime of registering black voters?
FiftyFourandAHalf 