"OK, everybody listen up. Tonight is a big night for us: not only are we going to celebrate the Turning of the Samhain Wheel at our Halloween cast party, we are going to be entertaining a very dynamic duo...the famous esoteric writer, Kathleen McGowan, author of the bestselling novel, The Expected One, and her associate, Hollywood producer, T. Grey." "Wow," Daniel d'Anger declared, winking at Anaton. "Maybe he'll buy your Dali script...that would be nice." "And maybe he won't, especially if you are acting like a bunch of dogs in heat," Olivia replied. "Try to keep it in your pants for tonight, at least until later," she near-demanded, casting a stern look over the assemblage. "These people are important to me if not to you...why, Dali would kiss the hem of my friend 22's gown if he was still alive...and evidently, Mr. Grey is very cool, too...in fact, he may give our two Greek Gods here a run for their money from what I'm told. So let's all try to do our best tonight - be professional - got it? The cast murmured their half-hearted acceptance of Miss O's dictitorial edict before she continued the lecture. "I want to remind you all of what Dali himself..." "The Master," Dottie interjected, unable to spend a single day away from the production. "...what the artist himself had to say about this work: In 1927, while sitting with the writer Federico Garcia Lorca in the spring sun in the café Regina in Madrid, we both developed a plan for a highly original opera. This opera became our common passion, opera being the only art form in which all the lyrical arts can be connected into a perfect and triumphal unity. This opera would enable us to transpose artistically the confusion, the colossal chaos, the ideology of our times." Olivia let the meaning hopefully sink in before commenting, "Perhaps we have our own Dali and Lorca, here now? I think perhaps we do. But they both need to work a bit harder and play a bit less because genius is earned, after all, is it not?" "Yes, the Master did say that," Dottie confirmed. "Anyway, allow me just this small adieu and then I'll get off all your backs," Mystress promised. "What we need to keep before us is this vision...that the opera, for all its strangeness, was meant to shock the world back into remembering...a Truth, a Credo of sorts, that was near-exterminated over the centuries. Perhaps Dali says it best when he wrote: On the day I received the news of Lorca's death - a victim of the blindness of history - I determined to complete the opera on my own. Since then I have never given up the idea of realising this project one day, in my riper years. My public can rest assured that I will always do - more or less- what I have said or promised. And this opera, this Tragedy, as the two saw it, put forth the very heretical idea, held by a 13th century community called the Cathars, that the God of this World, Rex Mundi, is not the Greatest, but rather...the smallest." "Yes!" d'Anger cried out in a triumphant voice. "Yes! Etre Dieu! Etre Dieu..." The chant caught Olivia unawares, near-tears springing to her eyes as the group joined the Androgynous Dali Male in his song of liberation. "Okay, okay! Settle down! That's great - let's see some more of the same on stage! And, before we even think about beginning today's rehearsal, let's select a card from the Dali Tarot deck, shall we? A reading as to tonight's perfomance...Anaton, would you cut the cards, please? Yes, with your left hand, just like that..." "Ahh. Look at this - the Knight of Coins, covered in cosmic kisses. A good omen that bodes well for our surrealist troupe, no doubt. I might only imagine that the wealth implied is of an earthy, Capricorn-Taurus nature...the same signs belonging to our stars, Daniel and Anaton. Now tarot cards aside, let's show the West Coast that the East Coast can bring down the house...break a leg, everybody!" While the rock gods tuned their guitars, and the pretty girls in costuming adjusted Anne of Brittany's crown and applied a dab more lipstick to Gala's lips, Olivia smiled at d'Anger and dared to take his hand for a moment. "I think of you as I would a younger Dali brother, you know. Do you realize how talented you are?" The handsome artist-actor merely smiled as the lights began to dim and discordant harmonies soon wafted across the theatre's boards.    Text Copyright © 1999 - ad infinitum cybersybils.com cybersybils.net Bovican Books All rights reserved.