They Can't Take Mozart From Me.

Thank God art is mobile. We can google anything. We have ipods, DVDs, computers... everything. Like I said before, the emotional attachment we feel to art is one of the most real, tangible human emotions I think that there is. I'm just grateful for the fact that no matter where I go, I can take a little bit of Mozart or Babs or PIcasso with me. That was a great comfort to me last year when I was first faced with being away from home. Art brings us home. It transports us back to a time and place that is indelible in our minds and completely disarming. It's like smelling something old and familiar--like your Grandmother's house or the perfume you wore to your prom. No matter how many times I listen to Swan Lake, and no matter where I am, I am immediately transported to the box that the Birthday Fairy Godmother put my Wolfpack and me in at the Lyric Opera House to watch the American Ballet Theatre production last April. The memory of the musty smell and soft friction of velvet surrounds me and Tchaikovsky's liberation and rebirth of strings fills my ears and heart and guts all at the same time. It's haunting. It's magic.
The other day my sister and I were listening to "Comfortable" by John Mayer. I told her that my favorite line was "Life of the party and she swears that she's artsy, but you could distinguish Miles from Coltrane..." I think that line is brilliant--it's like the reason that he loves his old girlfriend is because she took the art closest to his heart and made it her art. She knew the smallest nuances of it because it meant so much to him. It's quite comforting to think about. My dad was quoting something the other day that stuck in my head... I don't remember who said it or if it was just he who said it. "If it weren't for art, how would we know each other at all?" I'm very grateful for art, and for the chance to be known through art, and the chance to be enriched by it.
I'm reading Gilda Radner's memoir of her battle with ovarian cancer in the 80s. After her years on SNL, she had to relearn to be herself when the absolute worst happened--"the unfunniest thing in the world"--cancer. When she reemerged and reintroduced herself as a warrior against cancer, and still the same funny Roseanne Roseannadanna saying "it's always something..." she gave hope to millions of people, all through her commitment to her art: comedy.
If I have one dream in life, it would be to have the ability to touch people through art like that--to dance or sing or paint or write or be funny like that. Nothing connects us quite like those emotions do.
No matter where I go, or what I do, no matter how much I miss my family or friends or cat or car or whatever, I know that I have a little bit of Gilda or Barbra or Swan lake or Mozart within me--and no time or distance or place can take that from me.

Phoebe.

My friend told me that if you visualize yourself doing something enough, you can acquire that skill. It's in her education psychology textbook so it must be true, right? Naturally, my roommate and I made a list of all the skills we plan on acquiring using this method. (Megan and I obviously have very different ideas of constitutes a skill and what constitutes an activity... singing vs. flower arranging... telekinesis vs. bartending.) Nevertheless, if I keep to my visualizing exercises, I should be singing, dancing, and eating fire on Broadway as a cover for my secret life as a mafia boss by this time next year.

The television show Friends has become a staple for my friends and me. We've gotten through four seasons just since Christmas. It has been decided that I am, undoubtedly, Phoebe--that's P as in Phoebe, Has in Hoebe, O as in Oebe, E as in ebe, B as in Bebe and E as in "'Ello, Mate!" I'm always ready with a ridiculous answer or a brilliant analogy that people eventually come to understand (lobsters... they mate for life).

There was this one episode where Phoebe discovers that Old Yeller actually dies at the end of the movie. Every movie she watches for the next few days end up having a terribly depressing ending--"Pride of the Yankees? The guy gets Lou Gehrig's disease!"--so Monica gives her It's a Wonderful Life, figuring that it will cheer her up. Phoebe doesn't have the patience to finish the movie because it gets worse before it gets better. IMPORTANT LESSON HERE FOR SARAH. Patience and practice makes perfect. Sometimes, you have to sit through crappy things before you realize how much you love Donna Reed. I need a little more patience in my dancing, with my parents, my friends, my typing skills, everything. I guess we all do. Thank goodness we have someone as funny as Phoebe to show us that. In the mean time, while we are practicing our patience, we can visualize perfect pirouettes until they happen!

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The strength to change the things I can
And the Wisdom to know the difference.
-Reinhold Neibuhr


Wolfpack goes to Swan Lake.
Thanks Birthday Fairy Godmother!