The reckoning that occurs during the lifetime of almost every single person, no matter how short their time on earth may be, shatters us into multitudes, and by the end of our journeys we are inevitably a broken, or at least bruised, version of whatever level of happiness we might have been lucky to experience as children. I see that twenty years after I originally presented this Divine Diva project, and part of me saw it back then as well.
Still, there was so much I didn’t know. Knowledge and growth was stunted by vanity and worldly pleasures, clouded by cocktails and fashion, and subsumed by a diabolical need to be adored by those who noticed me least.
We tie ourselves up in knots no one could ever undue, least of all ourselves. We neglect to discover the true lesson of the child’s burned hand on an opened oven door: it’s not merely to avoid something hot, it’s to avoid something irrevocable, something that leaves a permanent, lasting, crippling mark. The caution of avoidance in pursuit of survival, the allure of temptation as challenge and test, and the way we want to hurt and fail in some twisted machination of bettering ourselves though healing and mending – what if there’s nothing noble in that? What if the messiness of evolution is just that – merely messiness? Is that enough?
Is it enough to simply be human?
And if it is, why do we even try?
Looking over the last twenty years, how my current life compares to the life I lived at the time this project was created, as well as feeling the weight of the previous almost-fifty years of my journey, mostly I feel a certain ambivalence. An uncertainty. The more I learn, the less I know, blah, blah, blah…
Closing this chapter of The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale brings the past to the present. At the same time that I wonder at how much has actually changed, I wonder at how different I am.
To warpingly paraphrase Gregory Maguire, change is not solely the province of the young – only the young at heart.
“He has become an autocrat in the best sense of the word – a self-ruler, a truly autonomous person, not a person who rules over others. In fairy tales, unlike myths, victory is not over others but over oneself and over villainy (many one’s own, which is projected as the hero’s antagonist). This is what maturity ought to consist of: that one rules oneself wisely and as a consequence lives happily.” ~ Bruno Bettelheim
~ The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale ~
- Pink Frilly Fairy: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three
- Homage to Herb: Part One, Part Two and Part Three
- A Purple-Hued Interlude
- Style & Panache: Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four.
- Purple Puff Confection: Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four.
- A Blue-Hued Interlude
- Fuchsia Fabulousness: Part One. Part Two and Part Three.
- Bad Boy Bangs: Part One, Part Two. and Part Three.
- Vanity Under Where: Part One, Part Two. and Part Three.
- Sugar Plum Ballerina: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
- A Pool Frolic: Part One, Part Two. and Part Three.
- A Cemetery Interlude: Part One and Part Two.
- Powder Blue Fur Doll: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
- A Milky Interlude
- Rock Out, Cock Out/ Hang Out, Wang Out: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
- Cocktail Cocktale: Part One and Part Two.
- A Fairy’s Interlude: Part One and Part Two.
- Willy Wonkers: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
- A Peacock In Everything But Beauty: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
- Swan Lake Fantasia: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.
- Black & White in Briefs: Part One, Part Two. and Part Three.
- Weave of Basket, Weave of Rope: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.
