VERTIGO

Say the word "Vertigo" and I'm remembering the movie.

James Stewart and Kim Novak in a church tower ...
The beautiful Kim looking head-to-toe exquisitely perfect, and stiff, as if she'd been hair-sprayed all over.

I feel hair-sprayed when I try to remember who was the murderer, was he in love with Kim, what this movie was about.

I woke up day before yesterday feeling very tired. Got up carefully,. When I looked around, I realized the dresser, the television set were moving, the ceiling sort of whirling. It happened to me about seven years ago -- my doctor said it was my inner ear, and would probably disappear in a day or so. And it did.

After coffee (I wasn't nauseous but I didn't feel hungry) I looked up vertigo. "... a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, caused by looking down from a great height or by disease affecting the inner ear or the vestibular nerve. Origin: Latin, 'whirling', from vertere 'to turn.'

Okay, I've called myself "Dr. Em." I know that it would take an Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist, a Neurologist as well as an Internist, various diagnostic tests, and even then it's unlikely that I'd get a diagnosis, or any remedy other than "Take it easy. It can take a few days, a few weeks to pass. Over the counter remedies for motion sickness can help, but tend to make you sleepy."

So ...how am I taking it? Am I taking a vacation from my daily dance exercise?

No. When I do my dancing, I invariably feel better, write better, am zestier, and I've got my sense of humor -- it's like a jolly puffy cloud hanging over me -- keeps me from wondering if vertigo is one of those overly advertised, fearful, incapacitating things?

Fearful, ain't good. But incapacitating is unacceptable.

I'm not in the right frame of mind to ramble on about ailments, but here's a slice of advice. When you don't feel up to par, a curative is to find a cheery aspect of your situation. (like, hey -- take the afternoon off -- go to movies!) And go for it -- an aspect, an element of what you're doing or planning to do, that will be done better than ever because of your heightened awareness of it.

So, in a minute or two I'm heading down our stairs --four flights, 68 steps, holding on to the banister-- I'll enjoy walking -- I may check out the new vintage store on eighth avenue.

If this explanation of handling my vertigo seems jabbery, rambling, convoluted, blame it on my light-headedness. I'm just saying that mentally making yourself feel better is part of the cure!

BEETHOVEN ROOMS AT MY HOUSE

My actor guy -- I tease and poke fun at his dunce-like inability to handle the computer.

But ...

He's Beethoven ... hunched over the Yamaha, staring at the music paper on his computer monitor, fiddling with the keyboard, inserting grace notes, while wife Em, (he calls me Mrs. Shakespeare) is across the hall putting words into the blog page on her computer.

I'm astounded by the way he handles one of the most complicated computer programs I've ever seen.

Finale ... You can compose music with it, play it, create sheet music, as well as import music from other sources. The composer and lyricist guys who wrote the musical "Urinetown," introduced JC to it.

When the program freezes and he calls the Computer Fixer Em to fix it, I have to wind up my brain key -- it's complicated -- I keep forgetting how to do it. Fingers chugging, I reset the modes and options, as the manual instructs you to do if Finale freezes. And get my thank-you kiss smack, as Beethoven's back to the keyboard.

I remember processes as if they're a ballet combination. (Not tap dancing -- as I've explained in other posts, itty-bitty toe -heel tap steps utterly defeat me.)

Well, my Beethoven CAN do them; AND sing intricate lyrics, hit a G while he's itty-bitty step-stepping, inserting minute details of phrasing, ad-lib verses, double-bar repeats, triplets, sixteenth and thirty-second notes.

AND importing new pages of sheet music from Hal Prince's "Paradise Found." He selects instrumentation, transposes it, clicks "play" and accompanies himself, as he's getting ready for Monday's workshop rehearsal. (He's playing the part of a sex-starved Shah with a hundred wives.)

All this -- daily rehearsals, a show at night, while Beethoven continues to do most of the shopping, lugs the recycle and trash bags down our four flights, makes his divine, fluffy-whipped potatoes to go with the spicy Chinese veg and scrod entree I'm cooking for our nightly jamboree --him playing his song from the musical --me reading aloud a post I've been writing. Afterward, there's an exchange of family/friends news and gossip, then the last seconds of a Lakers or Mets game while we're loading the dishwasher, and Beethoven and Shakespeare settle down to watch the final edition of the evening news.



Yep, end of our busy, creative day is mostly a festival. When JC played the music, and sang that Shah song he's working on ...
And hit that final note ... wow, I love his voice!

OOPS

My mind is a calendar, computer, adding machine and I never forget.

Oh yeah? Well, I didn't post the post I had planned for the 15th.

I'm kind of enjoying the feeling that I was so busy writing the next two posts, especially the one for the end of the week, so absorbed in finding a picture for it ....

THAT Em the elephant who never forgets, FORGOT!

HIGH DIVING

Drum sounds, the resonating deep boom of kettle drums get to me. Jerry Lee Lewis on the piano, and all the film and sound clips of Elvis get to me. Willy Nelson, and other guys too, but Elvis and Jerry Lee, more so.

I'm talking about the booming drums that composer Gustav Mahler used in his Fifth and Tenth symphonies. Other composers have killer powerful sounds that get to you (Stravinsky, Beethoven, Bartok, each his own way), but I didn't change my life in order to dance to those pieces of music.

I did change my life -- I jumped through hoops -- in order to dance to Mahler.

Jumping through hoops is what you do when you serve/obey/accommodate someone without question, exert yourself mightily, beyond your limits even, like a trained animal leaping through hoops in the circus.

I took risks, made commitments, because I wanted to dance with that sound under me, around me, surrounding me.

Mahler's Fifth is a seventy-minute symphony. (Authorities, teachers of choreography say: "A solo should be five minutes, ten minutes at most." So of course that made me more determined than ever to do a seventy minute solo.) What worried me was the second movement of the Fifth ... it seemed ... well ... boring to me as a listener. Nevertheless, I spent a ton of money on my Mahler project -- on the choreography and costumes which were created for me. Then, I proceeded to dance the Fifth in some famous, big-time, major theaters in South America, South Africa and New York City.

What next? Mahler's Tenth Symphony. It is rarely played by orchestras. Despite the nose-in-the-air professors who belittle the Tenth, because Mahler died before he finished it, I found the music goose-pimple thrilling.

I spent about two years, writing a two-character dance play -- "Zinnia." Casting an actress for the acting role, choreographing it, working with JC as director -- it was a five month "run" in the Colonnades, an off-Broadway theater.

What I got from dancing to the booms from doing the no-no-don't-do-it project, "Zinnia" -- from our energy, thought, passion, money, expertise, research, study, and endless rehearsals -- is what I get from sitting here and writing -- a full use of myself, brain and body.

So, now you see that I love to jump through hoops. High dive ... climb the stair to the platform, climb beyond it to the highest rung, look down at the pool, the hoop below. I'm not a good swimmer, not a diver, but the bounce on the springboard, the moment up, up, and out out out in the air ... I'm flying ... soaring.