I heard this song for the first time tonight while watching an operatic musical from the 1930s. The way that they sing it and the way that it just kind of tumbles....it's wonderful! And the movie is HILARIOUS! If anyone gets the chance to watch it, do! It's amazing.

Ah! The sweet mystery

Of life at last I've found thee

Ah! At last I know the secret of it all!

All the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning

The burning hopes, the joy and idle tears that fall

I've a very strange feeling I've never felt before

'Tis a kind of grind of depression

My heart's aching strangly; it feels rather sore

At least it gives me that impression

My pulses leap madly without any cause

Believe me I'm telling you truly

I'm gay without pause

Then sad without pause

Yes, I'm falling in love with someone,

Plain to see

I'm sure I could love someone madly

If only someone would love me.

--Naughty Marietta (1935)

I just love old movies/musicals!!!

Enchanted

I'm sitting here, watching Enchanted. There are several scenes in it when the evil queen's hunchman is trying to kill Giselle. As we all know, at the end, the hunchman (Nathaniel) ends up turning on the queen, denouncing his feelings for her and blaming her for the terror that has been caused. What would have happened if the he had succeeded, though? What would have happened if Giselle was killed by that very first candied apple and Nathaniel had gone back home. He probably would have lived out his life as a survant, always pining for what he wanted and never being happy with what he had. He would have lived at the foot of evil and never even had that satisfaction of tasting of that power himself. Instead, he turned good. Wrote an inspirational book.....etc, etc, etc.
Is it possible, then, that sometimes our biggest obsticle is our own success? That, sometimes, our acheivements in life are the very things that hold us back from another potential? One that, perhaps is less glorious, and perhaps is not the one we had in mind, but is one that we are better to fulfill? Sometimes, maybe it's good to fail.
Thoughts, anyone?

The Phantom of the Opera

How completely different would we view The Phantom of the Opera if instead of the phantom being a large, imposing man with seductive prowess he was instead Christine's alter-ego. Picture it. She's singing into her mirror "Look at your face in the mirror--I am here inside" and for once Christine realizes that the person who has been causing these mysterious happenings around the opera house is her. The person who duals Raul in the graveyard is actually Christine herself--posessed by a power that she, because of her other weaker personality--is unable to override. Because of some abuse in her childhood or some other tragedy (the death of her father, perhaps?) she becomes the phantom. One part in the play she sings "I am the mask you wear" (when she is taken to the dungeon for the first time)...she wear that mask--the guise of Christine so that she can operate in the real world--but the source of her genius is the derangement of her mind. The whole show, then, becomes a struggle of self--rather than good against evil. It isn't until Raul says that he would do anything for her--and attempts to prove it (or perhaps that is also one of her mad dreams?) that she finally is able to let go of the phantom inside her and she is free to be the mask that she has shown to the world--however incommplete that makes her, and however painful the death/distruction/disappearance of the phantom will be.

Is that the lesson of the Phantom of the Opera? Or is it really just two really attractive (who cares about a little bit of face distortion, anyway? Have you SEEN me in the morning??) guys with amazing voices going after the same non-commital girl? Bad boy vs. good girl dillema?

Perhaps we all have a bit of the Phantom in our own minds....