February 1968, Northfield School, Northfield, Massachusetts
Then:
On a freezing evening in a chilly auditorium, the weekend movie had been announced but as not many in our dorm had ever heard of it, I went alone.
During Christmas break, my older brother had mentioned ‘Elvira Madigan’ over tomato soup and Boston brown bread, saying “You would love this movie, France, it’s romantic and beautiful and rips your heart apart. It’s about a circus tightrope walker and an army deserter in the early 1900’s in Denmark who fall in love and run away together and it’s a true story. You would love it”.
When an older college brother speaks, one listens.
And so I went alone, huddled up in my jacket, and the entire experience of exquisite ethereal visual beauty, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and the agonizing love story has haunted me forever. The story was simple, the immersian into where one was taken, indescribeable,
My brother was RIGHT.
Now:
Cirque du Soleil seems to be inspiring tightropewalking wanna-be’s on the bluffs over-looking the ocean in Santa Monica. Hence, my rose garden meanders and palm trees blowing in ocean breezes, which have sensorily fused my years in India with Lake Michigan NOW include my passion for visual story telling and its power to expand and lift one’s world.