Here are some tidbits...

...left over from my xanga and official Phantom days, among other things.


Enjoy.

The first is the beginning of a "Phantom" roleplay that, sadly died, like all the other ones that I have been involved with. The beginning was written by me, as I had the part of the Phantom himself:

“Behind the Mirror”- Xanga Role Play 


Erik:
"I lie in the dark....waiting.... for I know not what. The restoration of my soul? No, that is something that I have long since given up. I fight with my own personal demons....the ones who have taunted and plagued me all my life. The ones that take shape in human forms come back to me in the night. The anguish of these memories is almost more than I can bear! I try to forget! I struggle with the immense pain of knowing how much suffering and death I have caused. 


I feel so angry that mankind is so blind! Why can people never see the beauty that is just below the surface, just out of reach. If only people had the courage to take that extra step and grasp what beauty is out there! Oh why are people such cowards? Clinging to the same old routine! They cannot comprehend what they are capable of! I could teach the world to know beauty as they have never seen it....or heard rather, as music is my true passion. Music is what has kept me alive these long years. Music speaks to one on a deeper level then anything else. It conveys without words, the deepest and most desperate desires of our hearts.


As I sit here alone in the dark of my chamber with but one candle burning, suddenly a shaft of illumination blinds me! I cannot make out the words...but the melody....and the voice! It sears through all of the barriers which have long protected my heart from feeling any emotion. Feelings that have long laid dead within me are awakened with a terrifying surge of hope renewed. Hope that there is someone in this world who sees true beauty and is not afraid to reach for it. Someone who might be able to renew my fallen faith in humanity. There is a beauty in this voice that I have never heard before, but there is a sadness also. One that speaks to me and tells me that they too understand the pain and anguish of life. I close my eyes and soar to the very gates of heaven. Gates which I know are forever barred to me. I neither notice nor care for the tears streaming down my face, underneath the mask that hides the true nature of my existence. 


Then, just as suddenly as the voice began, it ends. I feel as though I had just become addicted to a drug that was as beautiful and calming as it is brutal and disorienting. I can think of nothing but hearing that voice again! Not fully realizing where I am going, I slip in and out of the many passages below the Paris Opera House, till suddenly I find myself on the other side of a mirror.....and on the other side is a vision from heaven. The most lovely girl I have ever seen sits there brushing her hair, quietly humming to herself. She stops and looks at her reflection and smiles! Oh what I would give to see her smile for all eternity! But there is a sadness there too. A sadness that I recognize as that which one feels when one has suffered a great loss. Just as she begins to turn away, I quietly reach out and touch the glass. It is as close as I dare get. 


But look! She has turned back to the mirror and as if she knows that someone is with her, she too reaches out for the glass and for a moment our hands meet. I want to speak to her! To tell her she is not alone! But I see a mixture of pleasure and pain in her face as she pulls her hand suddenly away and turns to open the door. As she opens it, I hear someone on the other side say what my heart will never forget......her name.....Christine!

This next quote is from an email that my Dad sent to me, after I had written an entry on my personal xanga: Desert_Dreamer, comparing "Les Miserables" and "The Phantom of the Opera". He made some really good points: 


“Another thought about "Les Mis" and "Phantom"--there are two kinds of love portrayed here--quite different kinds of love and, frankly, one is more noble than the other. In "Phantom" we have the kind of love that society understands as "obsessional"--a real passion, and not in the healthiest or best sense, either, even though it's deeply attractive to our fallen human nature. But this is transformed into self-sacrificing love at the end, which is the only thing that really "saves" it. Nonetheless we are left with a sense of melancholy because this love was tainted by being at first obsessional. But in "Les Mis" we have self-sacrificing love almost from the beginning, in many variations, including the sacrifice of self for the ideals of one's country. These various expressions of love are not obsessional, and are therefore untainted and completely noble, from beginning to end, leaving us not with a sense of melancholy, but with a sense of great dignity and worth.” 

I recently purchased a ticket for the 25th Anniversary Production of "Les Miserables" coming to Denver in September!!


This next one comes from a much older source: Queen Elizabeth I 


"I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.
My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant."

She wrote that to the brother to the King of France, the Duke of Anjou and Alencon, whom she had thought to marry....but alas! Twas not to be.

I have always enjoyed this take on the film adaption of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom":


"The Phantom is obsessively in love with Christine. When he discovers that she has fallen for the opera's handsome and rich patron, Raoul, who was once her childhood sweetheart, the Phantom is overcome by a terrifying violent jealousy. And I'm not surprised either, because Raoul looks like a girl, whereas the Phantom is a moody hunk with fabulous dress sense. Christine might have musical talent, but she has infuriatingly crap taste in men."

Then, when I had an interview.....at a Dental office, I was impressed by a poster that the doctor had up in his office, it said the following: 


"THE HIGHEST COURAGE IS TO DARE TO BE YOURSELF IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY. CHOOSING RIGHT OVER WRONG, ETHICS OVER CONVENIENCE, AND TRUTH OVER POPULARITY...THESE ARE THE CHOICES THAT MEASURE YOUR LIFE. TRAVEL THE PATH OF INTEGRITY WITHOUT LOOKING BACK. FOR THERE IS NEVER A WRONG TIME TO DO THE RIGHT THING. "

Then there is this little thing I wrote up several years ago: 


"The rose seemed to quiver at his gentle touch...slowly it opened to reveal a world far beyond the mind's imagination. A world full of beauty, honor, justice, and love. But...as soon as the world was visible...it disappeared into the soft pink petals....he wept. He wept for a world that would never be...could never be. A world of innocence that had not been lost. After drying his tears, he smiled down at the little flower and whispered.." I promise to do all that I can to insure that that world will never be forgotten!" 

"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you." ~C. S. Lewis~ Good ol' Clive Staples Lewis. He really knew what he was talking about.

P.S. Here is something I posted on my Desert_Dreamer a while back: 


Thursday, January 13, 2005

There is a thread on the official Phantom website where a girl wrote about how she feels about the musical from a Christian viewpoint, and this is how I responded: ( I thought you might find it interesting)

"I definitely agree with you. From a Christian perspective, the story of the phantom is very interesting and insightful. As I said a few weeks ago in another thread, that is what I love so much about the story and especially the musical, and why I love "Music of the Night". Because for ONCE in out society, we have a love scene that ends with great love and tenderness, instead of what is so "typical" of our society today. That is the beauty of the film, and why I am SO happy that it is doing well. Here is a movie with no sex, no drugs, no bad language, minimal violence, and yet it is one of the greatest love stories of all time. Passionate and soulful, beautiful and horrifying, a movie that can touch you, down to the very core of your being. And in the end, it is because of Christine's kiss, her willingness to sacrifice her own life to save Raoul's and to show Erik that he is not alone. Her selfless act that shows Erik what true love really is, and in that moment, as much as he wants Christine to stay with him, he knows now that he cannot ask her to do it. As he hears the echoes of the mob hunting him, he knows that he cannot "condemn" the woman he loves to live a life like his. He is so shocked by this one act of love, that he, in turn, shows the true beauty of his own soul. So, instead of a happy ending, it ends with love, sacrifice and submission, those qualities that all of us Christians constantly strive for.

My mother died 8 years ago, and I have recently moved away from all of my friends, and my father, so I have had no one to go with me to see the film, so I have really been feeling lonely and sad recently. But I've noticed that as I leave the theatre each time, I don't feel weighed down by thoughts of lonliness and turmoil, but instead, in a strange way I feel uplifted and satisfied. Because really, deep down, we all feel lonely and unloved. Besides would you really like to see Christine stay with him? I think his letting her go, is part of the beauty of the story, and I think that deep down, he always knew that that was how it would end. We should all remember that we are not alone, that Christ is always with us, and that it is when we feel the farthest away from Him, that He is really the closest to us.

Phantom_Lover22"


That was my screen name on the Official "Phantom" website back in the day.  

"The Banquet" or "Legend of the Black Scorpion"

I wrote this review several years ago after seeing this film.

Shakespeare.

"To be, or not to be? That is the question."

Well, that may have been Shakespeare's question, put into the mouth of one of his most tragic heros, but what is the answer?

Even today, I still find it oddly compelling and fascinatingly interesting that there are still those who like to take old Shakey's worn out renaissance plays, dust them off and give them a little something different, in the hopes that they can "reach" a "modern" audience. Who can forget the Academy awards that year, when Whoopi Goldberg came out after every commercial in a different Shakespearian costume, and then, ultimately as the Queen of the Age herself, Elizabeth I? That year, certainly brought the turmoil of the 1500's vividly to the public's imagination, and you can still feel it lingering, even today......But what is it exactly about Shakespeare that makes us come back to his stories again and again? The sense of human longing perhaps? But a longing for what? Well, that depends on the character.... There's is power, wealth, love, hatred, revenge, honor, justice, just to name a few. It is interesting to sit down and watch a "modern" version of one of his plays. How the themes resonate in our minds and hearts to this day. I have always believed that one of the reasons why Shakespeare has survived however, is that his words are so poetic and lofty. One really feels as though one is no longer living in the streets of some modern city of the world, surrounded by cars and computers, cell phones and ipods. But one is transported to another world entirely. Never have I felt that as strongly as when I saw "The Banquet" (in it's U.S. DVD release, it is known as "Legend of the Black Scorpion" and stars Ziyi Zhang who was in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and "Memoirs of a Geisha".)

A Chinese retelling of the classic "Hamlet", "The Banquet" instills in our minds eye from the very first frame, the very first sound, the very first note of music, that this is no ordinary retelling of a well known romantic tragedy. As we are told the story, we first see significant differences in this version that take us outside of Shakespeare's Denmark, and lead us to discover that this may be a more sinister and provocative approach. With breathtaking cinematography, lush costumes, and beautiful music, we are transported back to China, and are introduced to the "hero" . The Prince, Wu Luan has been gone for three years, away from court, seeking solace in the arts. He had fallen in love with a girl, Little Wan, who was then wed to the Emperor, his father, and to escape the pain in his heart, he fled. We find him among other artists, singing a song that is filled with a longing that nothing in the world can seem to fill. 


"What blessed night is this? Drifting down the river Qian. 
What auspicious day is this? Dreaming beside my prince. 
Trees live on mountains and branches live on trees. 
My heart lives for your heart but you do not see me...." 


In between the verses, we are told by a narrator that Wu Luan's father has been usurped and murdered by his own brother, who then sends assassins to kill the prince. Unknown to the new "Emperor", Little Wan, whom he wants for his own, has sent out her own messengers to warn Wu Luan of the oncoming assassins, and to urge his return to court.

We are now introduced to the "evil uncle" and to Little Wan, whom he is trying to seduce into becoming his Empress. Sadly, it doesn't seem to take much for her to offer her hand, as well as everything else to him. We see them in some rather intimate moments, and get the feeling that she is not all that she seems. There are hidden agenda's going on in her thoughts, even the new Emperor is aware of them. But somehow, she manages to convince him that she is his.....completely.

Now, no version of "Hamlet" would be complete without it's Ophelia. But I must say, that I have never seen a portrayal done with more tenderness and sympathy, than in Qing, who, we gather, has been in love with the Prince for years. He has never written her in the past three years since he has been gone, but she has remained faithful to him, and dreams of him every night. When he comes back to the palace, having narrowly escaped the assassins, he asks her how his father died. She tells him that they believe it to have been the sting of a scorpion. Somehow, he does not believe that this could have been very likely.

So, now he confronts Little Wan, wearing his artistic mask and shabby clothes he comes to her. She is startled to see him like this and asks, "What has happened?" He replies by saying, "Shouldn't I be asking you that question?" He confronts her with asking how his father died. He wants her to look him in the eye and tell him herself. She takes him into her arms, a hint of their long ago affection still between them, and says, "The pain in your eyes breaks my heart. Don't ask so many questions. Don't think to much." He pushes her away, saying that his rags have soiled her bathrobe. She hits him, and then demands to know what he has in the old sword case he is carrying with him. Inside she finds the sword of the Yue Maiden and a song......"A love song?" she asks. "No, it is about loneliness." She suggests that he sing it for his friend Qing. He says that she would not understand. "No one can really understand another person. If we did, we would not feel so lonely." Little Wan then goes on to berate him about having spent the last few years pursuing the arts. She says that a "real" man should be strong and courageous. She reminds him that he has responsibilities to his people, etc. He responds by asking, "Hasn't my uncle already assumed those responsibilities?"


I will not spoil the story, as those familiar with the original play remember, the prince leaves and upon his return, a celebration is held, and in this version it is no different.


A great banquet (where the original Chinese title comes from) is held and many secrets are revealed, truths told, and lives lost. Qing confesses her love for Wu Luan by performing the same song, we were greeted with at the beginning of the film, and as she dies in his arms, he realizes the devastating consequences of his and others actions.


In the end, like in the game of chess, only the queen (or in this case, the Empress) is left standing.  Having won the game, she goes about her business, however, fate has not yet played her last move, and one card, the card of death, has yet to be played.