Dream a Little Dream, Butterfly
Yesterday ended with my trying to remember the Madame Butterfly reference in my choice of blog title. I'm not a big opera fan. Many female soprano's arias feel like an ice pick to my brain. Yet, one day, chillin' to classical music in the car, the radio broadcast the famous aria from Madam Butterfly. I couldn't understand a word but I understood the feeling. Listening brought tears to my eyes.
Later, I googled the libretto (text) for Madame Butterfly. Of course it's a tragic love story. Madame Butterfly falls in love with the wrong, white guy, Pinkerton. She converts to Christianity, her family puts a curse on her. She has a child by her crappy boyfriend and after waiting for his return for three years she finds out he has married some one else and is dumping her. She ends the drama with a ritual suicide. So, why did I pick such a tragic story?
I went to sleep with that question on my mind. No surprise that I have one of my movie dreams to answer the riddle. In my dream, I'm played by Amy Irving Go figure. My character enters a convent. I wander the maze-like halls of a nursing home in a white nun habit while being made aware of the treachery against me. They are driving me out because I reported the sexual advances of a superior. (That part is true to life.) In my dream, I leave and start life over in some artsy neighborhood in a big city. I work in a bookstore and have a great apartment in an art deco building, a series of lovers but never a mate. My best friend, looks like Amy Farrah Fowler from The Big Band Theory. (None of this is true except the apartment. I'm more Mayim Bialik than Amy Irving any day of the week.)
Inserted in this weird chick flick, is a difficult relationship with a mother and a daughter I somehow managed to have but who ran away and hadn't been in touch for 20 some years. I know this doesn't make much sense. (My daughter is the best person I've ever known and I love her to the moon and back.) Still, all this helped me remember "Why Madame Butterfly?"
Madame Butterfly should not have died. She should have realized her boyfriend was a jerk. She'd sacrificed too much of herself for the wrong reasons. She loved too deeply but not well. She killed her child's mother. I understand how she felt and if I could have intervened in this tragic tale, I would have stopped her and insisted that she shape up, grow a pair and carry on. She had so much passion and love to give that wasting it on "Stinky Pinkerton" was just stupid.
The idea behind the name "Butterfly" reflected fragility in the opera and foreshadows a short, colorful life. Focusing on beauty and resilience is a more rewarding story line to me and one that more and more woman should be interested in re-writing.
Finally, there was a snobbish aspect to my title choice. It sounded classy, something I am not. I bear no resemblance to Amy Irving. Most of my story lines don't resolve neatly, like my movie dream or Madame Butterfly. I'm left with a lot of loose ends and pieces that I just have to live with or ignore.
Madame Butterfly, you needed a good honest girlfriend who could have talked some sense into you!
You could have made a better choice. You sacrificed yourself for something that wasn't worth your death. Women have to stop tossing love away and put more energy into taking care of themselves. In this I can be more like Madame Butterfly than I want to admit. So, dedicating this blog to a self-awareness that focuses on resilience and not capitulation to some vague concept of fate, seemed like a good idea. Butterflies are beautiful.
Later, I googled the libretto (text) for Madame Butterfly. Of course it's a tragic love story. Madame Butterfly falls in love with the wrong, white guy, Pinkerton. She converts to Christianity, her family puts a curse on her. She has a child by her crappy boyfriend and after waiting for his return for three years she finds out he has married some one else and is dumping her. She ends the drama with a ritual suicide. So, why did I pick such a tragic story?
I went to sleep with that question on my mind. No surprise that I have one of my movie dreams to answer the riddle. In my dream, I'm played by Amy Irving Go figure. My character enters a convent. I wander the maze-like halls of a nursing home in a white nun habit while being made aware of the treachery against me. They are driving me out because I reported the sexual advances of a superior. (That part is true to life.) In my dream, I leave and start life over in some artsy neighborhood in a big city. I work in a bookstore and have a great apartment in an art deco building, a series of lovers but never a mate. My best friend, looks like Amy Farrah Fowler from The Big Band Theory. (None of this is true except the apartment. I'm more Mayim Bialik than Amy Irving any day of the week.)
Inserted in this weird chick flick, is a difficult relationship with a mother and a daughter I somehow managed to have but who ran away and hadn't been in touch for 20 some years. I know this doesn't make much sense. (My daughter is the best person I've ever known and I love her to the moon and back.) Still, all this helped me remember "Why Madame Butterfly?"
Madame Butterfly should not have died. She should have realized her boyfriend was a jerk. She'd sacrificed too much of herself for the wrong reasons. She loved too deeply but not well. She killed her child's mother. I understand how she felt and if I could have intervened in this tragic tale, I would have stopped her and insisted that she shape up, grow a pair and carry on. She had so much passion and love to give that wasting it on "Stinky Pinkerton" was just stupid.
The idea behind the name "Butterfly" reflected fragility in the opera and foreshadows a short, colorful life. Focusing on beauty and resilience is a more rewarding story line to me and one that more and more woman should be interested in re-writing.
Finally, there was a snobbish aspect to my title choice. It sounded classy, something I am not. I bear no resemblance to Amy Irving. Most of my story lines don't resolve neatly, like my movie dream or Madame Butterfly. I'm left with a lot of loose ends and pieces that I just have to live with or ignore.
Madame Butterfly, you needed a good honest girlfriend who could have talked some sense into you!
You could have made a better choice. You sacrificed yourself for something that wasn't worth your death. Women have to stop tossing love away and put more energy into taking care of themselves. In this I can be more like Madame Butterfly than I want to admit. So, dedicating this blog to a self-awareness that focuses on resilience and not capitulation to some vague concept of fate, seemed like a good idea. Butterflies are beautiful.
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