There is this great saying here in Brazil, "No final tudo da certo. Se não esta dando certo, você ainda não chegou no final" In English that roughly translates to, "In the end, everything works out. It things aren't working out, you haven't gotten to the end." I'm holding on to this saying like a lifeline right now.
The pain has dulled- actually pretty quickly as these things usually go. Is that a sign of my maturity?
I auditioned 3 months ago to participate in a musical here in Sao Paulo. The idea of the play was to re-create a "Cotton-Club" type club from Harlem in the 30s and mix some elements of the Gafiera dance halls in Brazil during the era of the director youth. It was to feature 2 singers singing Duke Ellington songs in English with a big-band and dancers. For me it was an opportunity not only to learn about acting and being on stage, it also felt like an opportunity to live a little of my history through song. The story of the Harlem Renaissance of which Duke Ellington and the singer I was to play had been a part, is in my blood. My grandmother used to tell us about going to dances at her college where Duke Ellington's Orchestra played for them. Being in the play was a chance to honor a part of my heritage and I was so excited and honored to have the chance to do this.
I was to have no speaking parts. I would just sing. As far as I know, I'm the only Black American Jazz singer legally living and working in Sao Paulo. It kind of made sense for me to play the part... well it made to me and to the musical director, but the director of the musical wasn't feeling it. In the final audition I was cut in favor of a Brazilian pop singer who seemed a better match to play a Black American Jazz singer, than I. Tears and anger and disappointment and doubts. The creation of this blog on failure. Then life went on. New opportunities came- one of them being a chance to record a CD.
What comes around comes around again. Two months in, the singer chosen over me decides to leave the musical because she's offered a part in a better musical. Musical director talks to the director, they invite me to join the cast. Rehearse for 2 weeks. You will need to walk like this, sing like this, be like THIS. It's not enough to be a Black American Jazz Singer playing the roll of a Black American Jazz Singer. You've got to be the kind of Black American Jazz Singer that the audience wants to see... in other words, you need to be a Black American R&B singer- Beyonce like- singing Duke Ellington Swing in a 60s Aretha Franklin style. Hummmmmm... well... OK.
Not.
Today, the producer's assistant informed me that they have another Brazilian singer who is more like what they need a Black American Jazz Singer to be for the musical. My services will no longer be required.
More anger. More frustration. Disbelief. More tears.
Then chocolate.
I decided to medicate with my favorite drug... FOOD.
Called up my friend Clara who was up for chowing down while I spewed my venom over the decision of the production team. Galeria dos Paes has an all you can eat buffet starting at 4pm. I'm sooooooo there!
I ate chicken soup (kind of given up vegetarianism, y'all. If you're gonna use food as your drug of choice you gotta include some meat in there sometimes), a coxinha ( a tear drop shaped dollop of Bisquick type dough with shredded chicken inside, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried), cheese bread, brioche with butter and jelly, cocoa puffs mixed with chocolate rice crispies, lemon cake, chocolate cake, hot chocolate laced with ovaltine and powerded capuccino, rice pudding, ambrosia, more rice crispies and cocoa puffs and then some coffee.
I was sooooo bad. It felt soooooo good!! I felt empowered! I felt justified! I'd deal with the consequences later.
My belly is distended and you wouldn't want to be sitting in this room with me right now, but I feel much better. Fried and sugar-filled processed foods along with some good conversations brought me insight. And that insight is bringing me some peace. In time, I think, will come understanding.
There are points in every life when you are walking a road that you feel is just the best thing ever. You are so sure it's right for you. It's everything you wished for and more. You feel you deserve to be walking there. You've earned it. You're so worth it. You'll benefit from all you can and will learn along this path. And you'll enjoy it to boot! Then comes this damn fork in the road. And really more than a fork; it's really a detour because you don't have a choice. You're gonna turn here. Don't pass Go. Don't collect 200 dollars. It feels like a "Straight to Jail" card, doesn't it?
And you wonder why? Because you deserved the happiness on the road you were on, damn it. It was nice there. It was all that you dreamt of. You didn't want to take a detour. None of it makes sense. None of it feels good.
The microcosm that I know as my life, is really just a small part of the macrocosm which includes the lives of all of us. And though we're each as unique a snowflake, we are all alike as snow. Each life reflects itself through another. A dear friend just lost a baby due to be born in a month. One morning the fetus' heart stopped beating. There was no explanation. There was no reason. There was no justice. It just is. A fork in her road. A detour she didn't choose; that life imposed.
Many of us are running head on into some detours in our life during these times. Some are bigger and some are smaller in scheme of things. But they all represent definitive changes in the course of our lives. They all represent death in their own way. They represent the loss of hopes and dreams be they big or small. They are, for the most part, things we would not have chosen from our human perspectives (for our spirit-selves surely see a wider perspective then we can humanly understand.) And so the question, how do we go on?
We cry, we kick and scream? We curse the heavens and God, if HE/SHE exists to us anymore? We sink into the mire of injustice, self-pity, self-righteousness and beat ourselves and other up? We eat fried and sugary things that we know will make our belly ache and punish our bodies, but bring temporary relief? We stop eating or enjoying any sensory pleasure at all? Or we use other legal/illegal dullers of pain? We try to make sense of things and fail? We forget what happiness feels like? We curl into a ball and hope we'll disappear? We break things and create chaos so that everyone will know we exist in our pain? We do all these things and whatever else we need to do to move through the pain, the muck and the mire. And in time, we do move through it. We don't come out the other end the way we went in. We've been indelibly marked in ways obvious or not on our way though.
We ask for patience. We hope that with patience, in time, our hope will be restored. And if our hope is restored then we might notice some things in the landscape as we walk this new path. With our eyes super-sensitive to the light (because they had adjusted to the darkness we felt engulfed in) the smallest things catch out attention- their colors and forms bright and so present it almost hurts to look. In time, our eyes will adjust and we'll notice more details along the road- a flower here... blue sky there... Our perspective will widen as we take in more and more along this new path and we'll even see some beautiful things. Maybe with enough time we'll be able to understand why this detour came. Or maybe it will remain unknowable to our human comprehension. But, when we can accept that this new path is the right where we are supposed to be, we'll be able to feel joy again. No matter how long that takes, we WILL feel joy again.
My detour is no where as big as my dear friend's. My tears have passed. My belly is receding. People who have a clearer perspective on my current events have shared it with me and I'm expanding my perspective. I'm still a bit sore, but I'm ok with where I am. I don't know where I'll go from here. There is no choice to turn back the way I've just come. Life just doesn't offer that option. But I have a choice to be where I am and see the opportunity in this moment. And that's what I'm trying to do. This is a new road. I want to believe that this detour came because the other road wasn't going to bring me as much richness in life as this new one will. Souls see riches in a different way, you know. I wanted to go that other way, but I needed to go this way. The GPS of life with its connections to sources much wiser than I, has chosen a route that's a better option in the long run. I'm gonna go with that. That's what I'm chosing to believe. And what I believe is what becomes my truth. The rest will work itself out.
I would love to hear your comments as always.....
And please send your prayers and love to my dear friend, her boyfriend and their baby in heaven. I don't want to mention her name here as I haven't asked her permission, but even without knowing her name, if you send your prayers and love, the Universe know exactly where to send them.
