The Daily News
1 You know, you never know what is going to greet you when you open a door.
2 I don't know. I swear. I just don't know.
3 So okay, I arrive at the faculty meeting in my usual fashionably late manner, when I am met almost at the door by Mr. Cruz, who informs me, "Mr. Harrington! You didn't have to do all of that!" Big handshake. The "...all of that" referred to our tearing down of the entire backstage and subsequent movement of everything out into the house on Saturday. "But Ms. Hooper said that Mr. Rocha said that you said that..." Instantly I saw the problem some of us may have experienced with communication.
4 It's a problem that seems to be going around nowadays. NOBODY bothers to communicate directly with one another anymore. It's amazing. I mean, I DID talk with Mr. Cruz about this last week, but I had first heard that he wanted the entire stage floor cleared of EVERYTHING, and I guess he must have been thinking of something different. Anyway, turns out that all he wanted us to do was to clean the FANTASTICS mess up from stage left.
5 This was really the mess of the Freshmen and Sophomores, and had NOTHING to do with the Senior Class.
6 Oh, well. I saw it as a living illustration of the old saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!" Heck, we had completely ripped the stage totally apart, so I saw the whole thing as a catharsis in the first place. It bordered on a religious experience, pulling all that stuff out and starting over. So I just see it as a blessing, and that our stage is going to be much more clean and organized as a result. In many ways, it gave "closure" to my years of directing. I don't know that I like the word "closure", because it's really more along the lines of a cleansing, or, more succinctly, a purification.
7 Dang. I STILL can't put it all into words. But I think if you read yesterday's and today's DN, you get the idea.
8 Speaking of which, yesterday I talked of the U2 concert, and of how much that band has meant to the Drama Workshop. Over the years, stage sets have gone up, shows have been mounted, and lots of great memories have been built with the music of U2 playing in the background. Certain bands tend to work beautifully when doing sets: U2, the Grateful Dead, Enya, and a great many Irish jigs.
9 Anyway, the story got stranger yesterday, because I was driving back after an afternoon of searching down a picnic area for the Senior Picnic, when I thought I'd drop in to see the Pigeon Players' rehearsal for their upcoming show The Importance of Being Earnest.
10 On the way, I reached into my CD jacket, and the first CD I touched was U2's The Joshua Tree, which I thought I had lost during FANTASTICS! I popped it in, and instantly, the opening notes to Where the Streets Have No Name faded up, and I began doing the drumming thing on the steering wheel. I'm pretty sure I mastered the fine art of Steering Wheel Drumming on the ride back to the school, because the music rattled and hummed all the way, worrying me a bit because the windows began vibrating. As always when hit with loud, great rock at just the right time, I became molecular.
11 I arrived at the school, noticing instantly that the doors were all closed, an unusual thing at 6 p.m. I went around to the side door, where we let the audiences in for our plays, only to find the entire Theatre building blacked out, with the exception of one small box of colorful lights sitting DRC (that's down right center for the non-dramz out there) on top of the Peavey amp. It lit the whole place in color, bouncing off the mirror ball at delicate angles, and twinkling over all the backstage stuff, which was now sitting everywhere in front.
12 Here's a picture of what it looked like, sort of:
Well, better than that, but those are the very lights I walked in on. A small little string of lights in a Christmas box, but larger bulbs, maybe 10 or twelve, just sitting there on the Peavey like colorful embers of hope.
13 My guess is that either Jose or Sparky planted them, but it was an awesome effect. NOBODY was in the Theatre. It was another of those little miracle moments, and that would be two in three days.
14 The Joshua Tree still rang through my head as the lights danced and danced.
15 Sometimes, the world shows us things. It's been a year of lots and lots of tragedy and sadness. Sometimes we just get angry, or throw our hands up, or even question virtually everything, because there simply IS no apparent reason for things.
16 Other times, amazing coincidences stack up, one upon the other. We look for explanations, but science doesn't seem to want to offer any. Then we find things we were just talking about, and walk to meaningful places, open doors, and see miracles.
17 Synchronicity happens.
18 Sometimes you don't need to search very far for spirituality. Sometimes it occurs at the darndest moments. I can't even BEGIN to explain things, especially after the ridiculousness of things that have happened to people this year. In fact, I'm not really a very religious person at all, but I have my personal beliefs about some of the mysteries of life. Sometimes I even experience crises of Faith in whatever it is I feel is bigger than all of this.
19 And sometimes, everything directs me to a higher order.
20 Sometimes it's as simple as opening a door.
21 I don't know.
22 I just don't know.
23 Peace.
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