Keeping Score in America: Chapter Three
By Michael Moriarty
web posted June 24, 2013
We're beginning this chapter with my decision to quickly dash off a middle movement for my Dance Suite, the first movements of which can be heard here and here.
The other side of my brain – right or left doesn't really matter – can be found here.
Dunno why I've picked that particular article. It was there, I guess.
Things that are "just there!"
The moment you become distant from everything, you become alive to everything. It'll take a while to figure that one out. Blame it on the few years I spent with Zen.
However, this is the moment where I see that everything coming my way in the next twelve years will ultimately revolve around my opera, Three Nights In Paris.
In one sense, Three Nights In Paris is about the fall of Troy.
Now where the hell did that come from?!
I never thought of Troy until just this moment. Oh, well... it's Troy… or the fall of any other major city in the history of the world.
Paris, at its best and most eternal, is contained, like a Troy, within the soul of James Bloom, our major figure, our hero of Three Nights In Paris.
"Our" being myself and this opera's librettist, Steve Rybicki.
I will italicize James Bloom's name since his reality is mythic and, within my imagination, divinely gigantic!
What has this to do with America? That is a troubling question. It may take this entire book to deal with it.
Though there is much of my hero James Joyce within James Bloom, in the end, Bloom is a large corner of myself. Joyce and I shared – as did Steve Rybicki – in all of our formative years, the same Jesuit education, fighting the seemingly pointless chore of translating both ancient Latin and Homeric Greek.
An explosion of expression!
That is what four years of a Jesuit education impelled me to achieve. Learning of Troy, Odysseus and ancient Gaul's division into three parts, while at the same time I'm dreaming of life, not as it appears, but as music tells me it is?!
My entire being is eternally running in all directions at the same time.
That was the criticism I received from a William Morris agent.
"Moriarty! You get on your horse and ride off in all directions! At the same time!!"
Yup.
Joan At The Stake!
That's my translation of Honegger's original title, Jeanne d'Arc au bucher!
There's a direction I somehow cannot stop running in!!
Arthur Honegger.
And France!
Paris particularly.
Though I studied French in college, fell madly in love with French women, married one and have a son whose half-French, I really can't speak French fluently. Except at moments.
For some reason my intellect suddenly orders itself into French-speaking software of some sort and off I go, running in all directions at the same time speaking French.
Hmmm… couldn't put a French sentence together now.
Being a rare and almost singular American, 3rd Millennium exile in Canada, I envy the earlier American exiles in France.
They had company.
A coterie of intellectuals, i.e. Richard Wright, Gertrude Stein, Anais Nin and Henry Miller; all of whom seemed to have found Paris to be their paradise.
Whether that was true or not? No way of knowing for certain.
I really needn't move anywhere now. By dint and virtue of the internet I can walk almost any major city in the world and know the streets and shops by name, converse with the owners via their web pages and spend a whole day in Paris, putting together scenes for my opera, Three Nights In Paris. I pray for its completion within four years, if not my first prophecy of twelve years for completion. In the meantime I will be putting first a Dance Suite on 77gelsomina - Youtube. Then comes my Symphony For Strings, many more Etudes and then, God willing by Christmas, a Ballet.
The Losers Ballet.
I recall a few young Canadians recognizing me as I sat alone in Winnipeg getting drunk.
"He's a loser. Moriarty's a loser!"
My Lord, Jesus, was the greatest "Loser" the world had ever known till then. Till anytime! Claimed He was God and then was tortured and executed in the slowest and most excruciatingly possible way!!!
That was the whole point, of course.
"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son"… to be made a "loser"!
Then to be turned into a symbolic dinner of sorts. A meal to be fed to as many losers as possible.
How can you possibly gain strength from a Loser?!
You'd be surprised. 
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.