Keeping Score In America: Chapter Two
By Michael Moriarty
web posted June 17, 2013
I don't imagine any of these chapters will be longer than ten pages. If they are, I'll do my best to explain why.
I write now as I read, in short spurts. My appetites for life are much too ravenous to dwell for too long on any one thing.
Except for the horrors of legalized abortion that is. Not sure I want to go diving into that subject this early.
No.
Be assured, however, that when I do, that chapter will be longer than ten pages.
What should you know about me in this second chapter? I've waited all my life for the ecstasies I experience regularly during this, most likely last decade or so of my life.
How did I get here?
That's what this whole book is about.
What special privilege have I been given to be so blessed by God's gift to me? His saving the Best For Last?!
My personal opinion?
Two reasons for these heavenly days:
1. Ten years battling alcohol and learning the true meaning of "Let go, let God"
2. The power inherent in the courageous assumption that "All of life is Perfect!"
Those two facts and their revelations plus an all-important third:
3. Find your true vocation in life, your true "Calling".
My "Calling" is an opera entitled Three Nights In Paris.
It will take twelve years to compose, develop and see performed.
During that time, God willing, I will have also composed nine, sizable symphonic or dance works.
"Hmmm…"
There's really nothing else to know in life except your vocation, your calling.
God will provide all the rest for you.
Reading Moriarty's Rules For A Renaissance Life – which could very well be the subtitle of this book – and listing them backwards: you're here for a very great and particular reason. Why? Perfection is not slipshod. How? God will slowly but steadily let you in on a few of His Secrets; but only a few of them.
As for the rest?
Just enjoy the ride!!!!
Easily said, I know.
I always wonder where my readers are in their lives. All, of course, in very different places.
My main interest in my readers is to make sure they never give up! That they never completely despair, no matter how many, seemingly wrong paths or mistaken turns they appear to have taken.
Oh, some will desire to "pack it in", but pack it in, hopefully, in much smaller and less dramatic ways than suicide.
A tenacious belief in Life's Perfection, however, will carry you through!
Why?
Because, if the Truth be known, Life and the entire Universe are Perfect!!
Listening to the completed first movement of my First Symphony!
Of course, I conduct as it pours out of the FINALE playback!!
Perhaps I will conduct my music again as I did in New York.
No, I'm not a conductor really since I don't want to spend the time required to prepare a performance of music other than my own!
"Naughty selfish boy!!"
Artists are not always nice people.
In my experience, most people are not "nice" people.
"Nice" is never good enough for life.
Never Grand enough!
Certainly not for a Perfect Life!
Listening repeatedly to my own music.
The movements, if only just begun? Repeated listenings tell the composer where that movement wishes to go. When music has a life of its own, apart from the passing whims of its composer, tells you a story that you hadn't quite imagined even possible?!
If that's the case, you've fallen into something really worthwhile!
Pizza just arrived!
If the world is in love with anything universal now? It's pizza!!!
I think God enjoys pizza in heaven at least once a week!
Meanwhile I read with shock, as I attend to a full recording and video-tape of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. that for its premiere production, the opera received 15 weeks of rehearsal! That is unheard of in the theater and, I suspect, an unbelievably generous luxury for Debussy and Company to wallow in.
Where does Claude Debussy fit into my life now?
A distant and increasingly unimpressive figure fading into the distance.
Meanwhile, Puccini, Mozart, Bartok and Bach are my Gods.
Why?
With the possible exception of Bartok, they primarily served the human voice… and God! The irony of Bartok is that his bottomless store of Hungarian folksongs made up the central inspiration for most of his music. He knew that there would be no better way to retain and celebrate his own, profoundly Hungarian soul than with the melody and soul of Hungary's songs.
Aaron Copland felt the same way about America.
They both were intensely loyal to their nations' musical identities.
No, I don't see God as a central figure for Bartok, Copland or Puccini.
Secretly, however, their affairs with God were that of an undiscovered lover.
What has all this to do with Michael Moriarty's autobiography, Keeping Score of America?
Michael's final and hoped-for masterpiece, after a dreamed-of nine symphonies and/or ballets, is an opera, the title of which, as I've told you, is Three Nights In Paris.
What's it really about?
That I save for my Diary, which will be published by Irene my wife, after my death.
Presently she is putting her selection of dance photos into her video for the first movement of my Dance Suite.
You'll learn as much about me from the music on 77gelsomina as you might learn from this book.
Not facts.
No.
Something more important and vastly more eternal than facts.
A hopefully enjoyable introduction to my soul. 
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty.