We are always on the creative edge of history.
Welcome to my world of deep thoughts and the stories of history that never end.
As I was listening to this song LOVE, by L.A. based GoldFord (in the video above) like most that resonate the common theme of love, I was uncannily reminded of a song from Les Miserables. Without hesitation, as music turned to words, it felt so hauntingly similar to Empty Chairs at Empty Tables. It would be the last song our youngest son would sing on stage during his high-school years, performing in Les Mis. I remember sobbing. Not just because he was our son leaving his whole heart on the stage, as most performers do — but because of the never ending strife of life. My missing best friend, who died of cancer, at 49, during our sons mutual time in high school. The missing. Whether heaven holds them or we are divided by one hundred different reasons — it’s enough to be moved when one wails for their lost, such as is happening all over the world, every second — and now absolute genocide in Iran. Could they see a world reborn in their death? Will their ghosts walk those streets someday knowing the cost was worth the revolution for future generations?
There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone
Here they talked of revolution
Here it was they lit the flame
Here they sang about tomorrow
And tomorrow never came
From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn
And they rose with voices ringing
And I can hear them now!
The very words that they had sung
Became their last communion
On this lonely barricade
At dawn
- Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, Les Misérables
- composed by Claude-Michel Schönberg, with original French lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel -- English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer
The cold hard steamrolling human machine.
We all live with it to some capacity. But when stripped down to nothing, arms outstretched, the only thing we require, is the Holy food of love. We can’t understand the concept of pure, unconditional surrender to love and security unseen. We spend our days wishing it was pouring from each others literal pores. Perhaps that’s the shadows of the failures... the broken pieces, glued together — then broken again and again.
We run. We stay. Relationships. Love. Hurt. Repeat.
We deal in internal foreign systems grown in childhood, nourished in genetics.
In shadows of the failures
Of the gracious ones who made me
Are the wounds that I have carried
Since I was a baby
All the words I've left unspoken
Like sleeping giants on my tongue
And I'm scared that I'm so broken
Still, I run, still I run
Oh, underneath, my heavy breath
Falling from my hazel eyes
Every tear that I have wept
Forcing me to realize, to realize
All I want from you (All I want)
All I want from you is love, love, love, love (From you, love, oh)
All I want from you (All I want)
All I want from you is love, love, lovе, love
- LOVE, by GoldFord
- Writtten by GoldFord, Davis Naish, Likeminds, Whakaio Taahi
In my long blessed career, I photographed several theater productions on rehearsal night. Full dress. Full stop soul to the ground. I’d hit the floor running just as hard as the actors on stage. So this is part photo tale laced in human story. The sweat and lighting challenges are real. Worth every quiet ache, squeezing my body between chairs, shoulders up gripping a long lens steady, holding my breath, to grab incredibly difficult scenes high in the rafters. In order to capture a nonstop theater production you must bring two cameras. I brought three. It’s just like editorial. One lesson using long lenses indoors with varying light changes: even with digital stabilization, “your speed should be the length of the lens,” or more, i.e., 200mm, 1/200th or higher, which will require higher iso (careful on that) especially for decent quality printable images.
The expression of art intertwined with the expression of art. Freedom at it’s core, to me, is to love God and live to create the way He did. Paint it, write it, photograph it, play it, make it, learn it, live it. Gratitude for life.
I never had the privilege of shooting Les Mis, but I did shoot Ragtime. My favorite. And, once again, an incredible, historically accurate blend of fictional characters within a historical framework of real characters, like Harry Houdini, Booker T. Washington, Evelyn Nesbit, Henry Ford, and J.P. Morgan — exploring American society in the 20th century. Many of us can think of a relative stepping off a boat and onto Ellis Island, with a dream and a few belongings. I know my husband’s grandfather did in 1928. He brought his young bride to America to be a mid-century artist.
Is it really different from today? “Welcome to the bigtop.” There’s real life and there’s the circus. It often crosses paths.
And that’s the point of living. Within our daily lives there are dreams. And at the core of those dreams — sacrifice. But first, we must dare to dream.
I re-read Sermon on the Mount this week and was reminded of this verse: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” - Matthew 7:13-14.
Hard and narrow is a gift.
The epic story of Les Misérables, by French author, Victor Hugo, (1862) is set in 19th century France, 100 years before the setting of Ragtime, follows ex-convict Jean Valjean, who seeks redemption after 19 years in prison for stealing bread (19 years for stealing bread. Meanwhile in California.) but is relentlessly hunted by Inspector Javert for breaking parole. Valjean reinvents himself, becomes a factory owner, then a mayor, and adopts a little orphan girl named Cosette. The original musical would premiere in French, in Paris, in 1980.
Ragtime, the musical, premiering on stage, in Toronto, in December of 1996, is an epic story exploring American identity, based on the book by E.L. Doctorow from 1975. It’s about a wealthy white family, “Mother,” a poor immigrant Jewish family, “Tateh,” and a Black Harlem musician, “Coalhouse Walker Jr.,” and how their lives intersect.
Both stories are tangled in poverty, moral struggles, societal injustice, love, hope, sacrifice, redemption and eventual change for the better. Both are about love and forgiveness.
Revolutionary.
If the world is slowly mеlting
Tell me why am I so frozen?
Oh, have I become an island
Sinking in slow motion, in slow motion
Oh, in the blind face of tyranny
Divided insecurity
'Cause love is not polarity
It's the remedy for you and me
It's everyone, it's everything
It's all we need, it's all we need
-- LOVE by GoldFord
Because love is the remedy for divided insecurity. It’s everyone, it’s everything. It’s patient and kind.
With or without God, if you LOVE in all you do — you are walking. A love soooo big — it’s not of us. Follow it, chase it, devour it. If not, we freeze on our island, sinking. Love guides us to truth. Love helps us “be.” Love puts us on the stage. Love expresses, creates. Love lives. Love doesn’t die at the hands of tyranny.
Love loves our enemies.
Love prays.
Love is the narrow gate.
“Yes, everything has a relationship within my own personal life. Love, there is nothing greater than LOVE in the world. This is the number one, that’s the number one which inspired me, the, the force, the force.” — Max Vaucher, my husband’s grandfather on “the dream.”
I see his face I hear his heartbeat I look in those eyes How wise they seem Well, when he is old enough I will show him America And he will ride On the wheels of a dream We'll go down South Go down South And see your people See my folks Won't they take to him They'll take to him Like cats to cream Then we'll travel on from there California or who knows where And we will ride On the wheels of a dream - Wheels of a Dream, from Ragtime Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics)
"I have decided to stick to love ... Hate is too great a burden to bear." - Martin Luther King
Theater production of Ragtime — Photographed by deborah t. hewitt, for Citrus College, Glendora, California — directed by the incredible former director of the theater department, Greg Hinrichsen. Costumes by Theater Company, Upland, California — Barbara Hinrichsen. Icons of theater :)
