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The Divinely Human Prison: Chapter One: 1st Movement

By Michael Moriarty
web posted December 8, 2014

As a companion piece to my first published memoir, Gift of Stern Angels, I have decided, because of not only my personal experience but also my emotional memories, sensations felt while composing symphonic, chamber and jazz music, I conclude that life is, indeed, a Divinely Human Prison.

Now listening to my Symphony No. 1, I realize how, if I were to generally title my symphonic creations up to now, they would also fall within The Divinely Human Prison.

Though my entries into Steve Martinovich's Enter Stage Right have been more political than anything else, I have surrendered to the generalization that "everything is political" and therefore I open this divinely human prison of mine to whatever audience remains.

That last thought is hardly false humility.

I have the arrogant certainty that my symphonies, judging from the highly respectful reception showered upon my Symphony For String Orchestra, performed in New York, Toronto and Calgary, will eventually find other homes aside from either my heart or my computer site. Some, most welcomed conductor or other will hear one of my increasingly numerous symphonies on a soon-to-be-announced, new computer site of mine and he will request a score to examine. Eventually, with conducting scores and parts provided, I will again have the joy of hearing roughly 50 to 80, brilliant musicians swoop down upon my notes and create hours of delicious mystery.

Having just listened to my first two symphonies and the portions of my Third Symphony that I have completed? I am obviously on a pilgrimage that I now call The Divinely Human Prison and I sit in as much anticipation and wonder about its outcome as a guardian angel might.

And that is thrilling!

Though such an affirmation might appear too easily satisfied, I, for one, receive answers to questions about myself that I have been asking throughout my entire life!

And there are many more revelations to come!!

For one, my symphonies have become increasingly angry; and, I believe, justifiably so.

As Time Magazine once dubbed the eruptions of my soul over the crimes of Attorney General Janet Reno and the Clinton administration, they titled them: "Freedom of Screech!"

Hmmm…

Yes!

I have become joyously in a rage!!

Rage without joy is both suicidal and, what is much more important, utterly devoid of bliss. With ecstasy, rage can become divinely liberating and exponentially more incisive.

2nd Movement

Now, approaching the year 2015, America has more to be upset about than at any other time in her history.

Why?

Since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and with the singular and Presidential exception of Ronald Reagan, an increasingly evil leadership has wrapped its tentacles around the United States in the shatteringly evil fantasy of a New World Order run by the United Nations.

And it has only grown worse and worse with each passing year.

Because of a deep-seated prescience about such coming nightmares, I decided to leave America 20 years ago and announced that fact in both the Daily Variety and the other major entertainment trade magazine, Backstage, during the winter of 1993-94.

I not only don't regret the decision but I thank God everyday for the courage He gave me to actually leave my homeland.

Now, from my perch in the bleachers of Canada, the Progressively Marxist New World Order, approved of by four of the most treasonously privileged Presidents and Presidential adviser of America: George H. W. Bush, William Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama and Henry Kissinger.

Clinton, the most cunning of the four, veiled his own surrender to the New World Order as a "Third Way". He and his wife Hillary still don't advertise The New World Order with as much chutzpah as Bush Sr., Kissinger and Obama's campaigns for the "fundamental transformation of the United States of America".

The product of Soviet Russia, "Neo-" and otherwise, and of Red China, this euphemism for World Communism, "The New World Order", veiled, as I said, by the well-known front of the United Nations, this New World Order has chosen Islam and Barack Hussein Obama to shove the poisonous medicine of this "Third Way" or "Fundamental Transformation" down traditionally American throats such as my own!

I shamelessly grow more in love with my symphonies, particularly this, my first Symphony.

It is dedicated to my beloved Stella Adler and her era of civilization's most dynamic achievement: New York City!

The entire symphony is a joyous but increasingly, for me at any rate, heartbreaking "au revoir" to New York and America but also to the traditional sonata form of symphonic structure. The familiarity of that architecture is massively comforting.

To move forward into my 2nd Symphony through architecturally uncharted territory? As the first movement is dedicated to Ernest Hemingway, such a choice for the ever self-doubting but gritty and, in the end, suicidal male dreamer, Earnest Hemingway… hmmm… God willing my "leap" into the unknown is leading to even richer pastures.

Each movement of my coming symphonies eventually evokes human beings, most of whom are well-known.

Some future symphonies will come closer to home and to personalities that only I and my closet friends know about.

Since I have already begun reciting this prose you are reading as I listen to my Symphony No. 1 I anticipate a recording of The Divinely Human Prison which includes both my rendition of this memoir and as many symphonies of mine as possible to accompany it.

A dream, a pipe dream perhaps, but, I can rejoice in exclaiming, an adventure to come that brings more joy to my heart and soul than any other event in my life!

3rd Movement

The final movement of my maiden voyage into the universe of symphonic music with full modern orchestra is singing into my ears now and, if you wish, you also can hear it here.

Hopefully in my new computer site, Michael Moriarty's Symphonies, each of my works will roll into your ears in the correct order of my original intention.

Presently the last movement of my Symphony No. 1 is now wending its way through my heart and my soul, briefly and, no doubt, insufficiently conveying the awe-inspiring life and death of the great Béla Bartok.

I would, however, and now so late in my life, prefer to shout my love and admiration, my tributes to my heroes and heroines, scream them from the computer rooftops, rather than pretend that I possess anything like a tasteful discretion, a stylistic trait which I no longer have any intention of repossessing.

Images of Budapest, Hungary now fill the computer screen.

I spent a few days myself in Budapest. At the Budapest Hilton Hotel, overlooking the Danube which separates both Buda and Pest.

I had foolishly agreed to star in a film written and produced by the author of a legendary novel and subsequent movie, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty!

Why foolishly?

I did not understand Mr. Blatty the first time I met him and things never improved after that.

Apparently, because I did not give a full-out performance at the first reading of the script with the entire cast, I was fired.

There was however a blessing in all that disguise.

My opportunity to invest William Peter Blatty's settlement money into a major chapter of my life – my theater school and company, Potters Field.

The other benefit from that film?

I had a chance to browse the Bartok Museum in Budapest.

Béla Bartok, as felt in my musical tribute to him, has, in his and its own very cinematic way, reached New York City where our hero feels utterly lost and out of place.

The breaking heart of a giant and his genius?!

All suffered within the manic-depressive nightmare of Manhattan's simultaneous adulation, envy and eventual contempt for all artists who aren't tough enough to endure America's metaphysical combat zone, New York City.

I personally adored the experience of that fighting ring for over twenty years! Only because of Washington. D.C. and the Clinton Administration did I realize, rather like the Bible's Last Just Man, that I must leave the city I had once adored; and bid farewell to the country which Manhattan has always and most arrogantly looked down upon: the United States of America.

More of this nightmare in my life later.

Of course, Béla Bartok is now an immortal corner of my very own soul, utterly unable to be destroyed. In fact, his own soul and that of Dimitri Shostakovich intertwine within my own identity and the music… goes on… and on… and on…

Occasionally, as Shakespeare might express it, on and on to its inevitably dying fall… either that or some miraculously momentous climax, an ecstasy to be found in whatever last symphony I can, God willing, leave on the Earth.

The three subjects for the three movements of my Second Symphony? Ernest Hemingway, Giulietta Masina and Marlene Dietrich!

The second, Giulietta Masina, is the most personal for me.

Why?

My wife Irene has such a divinely warm and loving relationship with Gulietta Masina, she has named the original site for my music 77gelsomina, with a photo of that Fellini character to accompany the entry site.

Therefore the Second Movement of my Second Symphony is my own personal vision of and tribute to the film La Strada.

The Third Movement of my Second Symphony?

Marlene Dietrich!

A very, very dark sketch of her life.

Why?

The Bartok-like ending to her time on earth, her years of deliberate isolation from the world. All apparently driven by the loss of her previously and legendarily divine looks.

This movement is also my own, rather bitter experience with Hollywood and my briefest experience with film fame, a suddenly ended career direction, mainly because of Pauline Kael's unrelentingly savage dislike for not only my acting but for the physical and spiritual appearance of a man she had actually never met, Michael Moriarty.

The Dietrich femme fatale and the Pauline Kael Medea-like savagery?!

Not to mention Dietrich's own struggle with her profoundly German identity during Hitler's diabolical reign over the Third Reich.

You can hear in the final movement of my Second Symphony Marlene Dietrich's singular themes struggling to be heard through the mounting march of Nazism.

Despite the depth, strength and power of Marlene Dietrich's commitment to the Free World, to America and an individual freedom which she as a star displayed most indelibly?!

The Dietrich Movement ends in an agony that neither she nor her fellow Germans can ever completely erase.

Not unlike American slavery, both nations, Germany and the United States, will carry those crosses throughout Eternity. ESR

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.

 

 

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