We're off to see the wizard ...
Hello, and welcome to my first Red Room blog entry. :-)
The topic of the week is L. Frank Baum's "Wizard of Oz." I suspect a lot of people will write about their fondness for the film; it's one of my favorites, too. However, my favorite memories of Baum's story feature my mother reading aloud from the book to me.
One chapter a night at bedtime, that was the rule. So, each night I would eagerly get ready for bed so that I could be tucked in and ready to hear about Dorothy's adventures in the Emerald City, Munchkinland and Quadling Country. I remember that she had a magical cap that controlled the flying monkeys, and that the shoes were silver instead of ruby. I even remember the little line drawings in the book that we had.
Reading to kids gets them interested in reading for themselves, and creates lifelong learners into the bargain. I am grateful to my mother for starting me on the road that eventually made me an author myself.
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Michael Pokocky says:
And what a wonderful writer
And what a wonderful writer you are. I was carried away. I did not want to stop reading.
Jeffrey Friedberg says:
And what a wonderful writer you are. I was carried away. I did n
Jeffrey Avalon Friedberg, Former Private Eye Author: BLACK ROAD 2012 Official Website: http://www.whats-thebigidea.com
Michael: to whom do your comments refer, please?
Just curious. I'm new to the Room and don;t think I'm navigating or reading right.
Thanks, jeff
Huntington W. Sharp says:
Blog comment
Welcome to Red Room, Jeffrey. Michael posted a comment on Sharon Cathcart's blog post about The Wizard of Oz. It looks like you left a comment that you later put up as a blog post of your own. Please write to us at support@redroom.com if you have any questions about how Red Room or any of its features work. Thanks!
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
Sharon Cathcart says:
Thank you, Michael. I'm
Thank you, Michael. I'm hoping this means that you read some samples of my other work. :-) (If it was my little blog post that you didn't want to stop reading, why, I guess I'll need to blog more often. :-) )
Jeffrey Friedberg says:
The Wizard Of Us
Jeffrey Avalon Friedberg, Former Private Eye
Author: BLACK ROAD 2012
Official Website: http://www.whats-thebigidea.com
Being an inordinately Old Angry Guy, I saw this groundbreaking stunner of a film Live, in a theater when it first came out. This was before Star Wars, digital special effects, general use of color film, street argot as art, swearing as culture, tits and ass as stunt stand-ins for ideas, and the use "party" as a verb.
This film begins in black and white, sets up the Ordinary Life of Dorothy in classic nursery tale fashion (read "mythic") and then suddenly soars into a Mythic rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow by the genius of Judy Garland.
The scene, singing, and singer have maybe never been equaled in the way they touch us, and maybe never will be.
Why is this? No tits and ass, no over-production, no tripled-dub, no nothing. How could it possibly "sell?"
The answer is--it just is what it is, is all.
Some things can't be improved on, some things we get right the first time, perfect. These eternals are drawn from a vast source of creativity inside us all, some not-so-dark cavern illumined by the sparkling atoms of all the lives and trials that have preceded us since the first single-celled alive thing divided and passed it's spark of life onward--to us. Are you worthy of all those desperate souls and their small stories and their spent lives?
Of course you are. It's why you're here, and what you're supposed to do. It's why that half-sensed Something lingers at the back tip of your thoughts and dreams--to connect with something you sense is out there and greater than yourself, and you seek the method, the doorway there. You want to be part of it--the something greater--and take it in, and be taken in.
Am I right?
So, you see, it's from the crystalline cup of infinity that the rest if this singular film is poured out for you.
Dorothy journeys dangerously through dire sequences rooted darkly in archetypal dreams, visions. She endures fear and desire, life, and death. But, throughout, she is protected and preserved as relentless destiny jams and drives and heaps her forward to her own inevitable revelation and ground to stand--or death.
Which will it be, the Technicolor-stunned and terrified child in the dark theater implores Fear and Desire.
Is Dorothy, Dorothy?
Does she have free will? Of course not, she's a metaphor penned by a divine entity. She can only do what her character dictates in a universe created for her--to move and mold her to one inevitable end set by her author.
Dorothy is us--the essence of fear and desire, life and death, Humanity's half-felt realization it is driven by invisible forces that power the universe. Something greater than ourselves--some vast source of limitless, impartial power. And to connect with it, and with our own Humanity--that is the unspoken, unrealized revelation of living.
To conquer life and death and everything.
That's what Dorothy does for us and with us--she welcomes and pulls us into her story, her life, her living, and her--our--destiny.
Either way, all fate is shared by all Humanity in all final realizations of an ending. That's just how it is, the sharing of our lives, DNA, cells, and identical spark of that same life force that binds and drives and heaps us all.
Scary?
No.
Dorothy tells us that even endings are a beginning.