In high school we called our talent show Night of a Thousand Stars, the annual presentation of the best of our abilities. I think it was sophomore year that I performed a number with Katie Mills and ran curtains the rest of the time. Our stage had the old-fashioned kind that required tugging at ropes while someone squawked at you through a headset.
Now, I'd rather be onstage at any given moment, but the view of a show from up above in the wings is reserved only for God and His techies. I could see onstage and backstage in a cross section split by curtains, the facade and the mechanics all at once.
Each night a girl sang an aria on the front apron of the stage while I kept the smaller curtain (traveler) closed just behind her. It allowed the next band to set up their drums and microphones and get in position right on stage while she was singing, so when the aria ended we could pull open the traveler and there they were, ready to go. No glitches, no waiting, and no distractions.
One of my favorite moments came just before this transition. Bathed in bright lights, the singer belted notes before the audience while two feet away, behind a thin black curtain, the band stood ready, the saxophonist pacing back and forth in the soft blue light designed to allow us to see backstage without distracting from the action onstage. Nobody saw them both doing their thing at the same time, nobody but me.
That's a long description of one of the ways I see life: two incongruent worlds happening side-by-side. And if you pay attention you can see them both, with the thin boundary between them.
I used to love and hate a poem called 'Goodbye' or something like that, about growing up and basically being slapped with reality. "Kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises," it was that kind of thing. While it was apt, it ended with a sigh: "You learn and you learn, with every goodbye you learn." Never a fan of disillusionment without grace or redemption, the end always sat hard with me. However, I see the importance of what the poem was, a short instruction on how to accept hard truths with "the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child."
The class of 2012 is about to finish its freshman year of high school. That means anyone who graduated in 2000 will soon see the end of the entire school system as they knew it. After 2012, nobody who was in school when they graduated will still be in the system. It's a sobering thought that so much takes place in 12 short years, and lives rise and fall in less time than that.
We're getting older, but we're not all growing up. Talking to a group of people at least twice as old as I, or more, I disclosed the secret misgivings I harbor about this whole process, because I know growing up should happen, but I can see people my age who just won't do it. And it's tempting. It looks carefree and fun. No responsibilities, or at least none that seem too difficult. No real commitment, no sacrifices. It looks good, why trade up?
Here's where I feel I'm peering out from the wings. Onstage is someone living their life and moving forward, leaving childish things behind them, while across the curtain their counterpart stays in the quenched blue lights, pacing back and forth. We can only stand on the sidelines so long. The show keeps moving and if we don't act, we're stuck backstage, where the lights are blue. Sure, it has its fun moments, and there's a lot of company. But staying here means missing out on the life we were created to live. It's the never ending wait meant to end in glory, that fizzles into nothing.
It's a failure and a waste.
Now, I'd rather be onstage at any given moment, but the view of a show from up above in the wings is reserved only for God and His techies. I could see onstage and backstage in a cross section split by curtains, the facade and the mechanics all at once.
Each night a girl sang an aria on the front apron of the stage while I kept the smaller curtain (traveler) closed just behind her. It allowed the next band to set up their drums and microphones and get in position right on stage while she was singing, so when the aria ended we could pull open the traveler and there they were, ready to go. No glitches, no waiting, and no distractions.
One of my favorite moments came just before this transition. Bathed in bright lights, the singer belted notes before the audience while two feet away, behind a thin black curtain, the band stood ready, the saxophonist pacing back and forth in the soft blue light designed to allow us to see backstage without distracting from the action onstage. Nobody saw them both doing their thing at the same time, nobody but me.
That's a long description of one of the ways I see life: two incongruent worlds happening side-by-side. And if you pay attention you can see them both, with the thin boundary between them.
I used to love and hate a poem called 'Goodbye' or something like that, about growing up and basically being slapped with reality. "Kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises," it was that kind of thing. While it was apt, it ended with a sigh: "You learn and you learn, with every goodbye you learn." Never a fan of disillusionment without grace or redemption, the end always sat hard with me. However, I see the importance of what the poem was, a short instruction on how to accept hard truths with "the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child."
The class of 2012 is about to finish its freshman year of high school. That means anyone who graduated in 2000 will soon see the end of the entire school system as they knew it. After 2012, nobody who was in school when they graduated will still be in the system. It's a sobering thought that so much takes place in 12 short years, and lives rise and fall in less time than that.
We're getting older, but we're not all growing up. Talking to a group of people at least twice as old as I, or more, I disclosed the secret misgivings I harbor about this whole process, because I know growing up should happen, but I can see people my age who just won't do it. And it's tempting. It looks carefree and fun. No responsibilities, or at least none that seem too difficult. No real commitment, no sacrifices. It looks good, why trade up?
Here's where I feel I'm peering out from the wings. Onstage is someone living their life and moving forward, leaving childish things behind them, while across the curtain their counterpart stays in the quenched blue lights, pacing back and forth. We can only stand on the sidelines so long. The show keeps moving and if we don't act, we're stuck backstage, where the lights are blue. Sure, it has its fun moments, and there's a lot of company. But staying here means missing out on the life we were created to live. It's the never ending wait meant to end in glory, that fizzles into nothing.
It's a failure and a waste.
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