Death on the Stage: Why the Audience Needs to Respect Performers
Cobb Great Hall stage at Wharton Center
Men and women flew up into the air turning, twisting, and contorting their bodies into various bends and tucks that wowed their audience. Dazzling lights, pyrotechnics and water effects flooded the show—and all I could do was let my jaw drop in awe. That was just the first act of Cirque Du Soleil’s Luzia performance that I watched at the OC Fair and Events Center in Costa Mesa.
My sister and I had taken my mom and my grandma to the show for their birthday. They enjoyed it, and I believed that everything went well until we walked out into the parking lot. (more…)
Ancient Ruins And Leaving Your Mark In The World
Before I moved out of my first house on the edge of my small hometown I tried carving my initials inside my closet. My younger self wanted to leave my mark on the place where I grew up in so that the next kid who would call my room their own would know a little about the girl who lived there previously. I suppose I didn’t do it deep enough because, when I went back to grab the last of my things in my room and to check and see if was still there, the painters had painted over it and there were no signs of my signature.
I did, however, made a very crude sketch of that house in pencil before leaving and hung it up on my wall in our new home. I ended up taking a piece of that place with me rather than defacing it for the next person, and, through the image that I had created, I could look at my old house any day if I wanted to.
Me at the Roman Colosseum
I learned this lesson at a young age, but I didn’t realize that there are some people who never seem to figure out how to capture memories. I read, recently, of two California tourists aged 21 and 25, who thought it would be cool to carve their names into the ancient Italian walls of Rome’s Colosseum, and got caught while taking a selfie with their damaging graffiti.
Looking back on my own brush with name carving, I could see how one would want to do this, however, I could never imagine me altering a piece of living ancient history at any age.
