#MinnegeddonPartDeux…The Week that Was…this could have been so simple…:-0

Even I can’t make this stuff up, and, you may have noticed, I have a fairly good imagination.  But no, this has completely taken even me by surprise.  During the course of one week two different venticellis made there way from halfway around the world (one Croatia, the other West Africa) to locations that have a connection to me (one to a library in the town where I live) and apparently my pony and I were slated to have been set up for sacrifice (so to speak) on a plain in the Twin Cities (read ‘the plain of Mediggo’ in Revelation…:-0).

I have been talking about a Minnegeddon in the Twin Cities since I found myself under attack (for no other reason than being good) as a flute performance major at the UofM. That was quite a while ago.  I brought up this concept again during the lockout of the Minnesota Orchestra, particularly as it had occurred to me that my three (at the time, little) children and I may have had a tangential connection to it.  As a result, I even wrote to different people at the orchestra — Mr. Henson, Mr. Sprenger, and even Mr. Vanska, asking for an opportunity to play for them on the stage where I was once encouraged and even enticed to play by a tiny cadre of players, again, long ago.  But I was not even granted the courtesy of a reply.  Instead, there seems to have been waves of controversy that threatened to engulf my family and me.  There have been hidden agendas and dirty tricks, all of which have been discouraging.  People I hoped would be eager to help have run away, throwing others to, apparently, act as proxies in their place.

In other words, this has been very confusing.  But during this time I have had a safe haven.  Almost every day I go to visit and ride my horse.  Out into the country — beautiful rolling hills with stunning horse estates…There was a terrible accident a few weeks ago at the barn.  One of my friends’ horses was severely hurt in what seems to be a freak accident (nobody was watching) and had to be put down. I was at the barn that day.  This was very traumatic.  Once I realized I was getting worried looks from Miles, my horse, I left, realizing that I was no help to anyone that day.  About a week later I was asked if I wanted to play the flute for a wake that would be held in the pasture where the accident took place.  Full of sadness and wanting to help, I said I would consider it.  I was then told that they would love to have someone lead my horse out to the pasture while I played.  All of this would be advertized in a flier to be handed out.  Last but not least, they would be including my birth family name  (which I stopped used at the level of the press some years ago) in the flier.  I found myself with a bad case of dread.  I speak at times of feeling that I am under attack by a dark angel that I call Lermontov.  This concept seemed to me to be pure Lermontov.  I decided to decline, and was met with a great deal of pressure to do this, using a great deal of emotional and flattering rhetoric.  When it became evident that I really did mean ‘no’ I finally had a sense of relief.  And so the wake went off beautifully, led by a bagpiper who played on the plain as the sun was starting to set…if anyone thinks “Minnegeddon” is just a concept I invented, I ask you to think again.  Plus, it is my thinking that all of this could have been prevented if those in the know at the MO had given me the opportunity to validate my credentials as the Other Mozart and had then confirmed them at the level of the press. But then, as the ringleader of the cadre I call “Monostatos” (I’m not being cute, I don’t want to be sued by using a real name) loves to say, “Some people just have to do things the hard way”…:-0

#MinnegeddonPartDeux…as things become more wierd by the hour…

I always knew that I could ride like the wind.  Some of my very first memories are riding behind my Father, a cowboy-turned-metallurgist in the hills outside of a small SD town.  I sat behind him, saddle or bareback, and hung on for dear life.  We took off at a gallop on the wiry quarter horses, stopped on a dime, and had an exciting and rambunctious time.  I felt more at home flying through the air on a horse than I did with my feet on the ground.

But things happened, and life changed us all.  My father nearly took his own life when I was eighteen.  I was never told why.  Instead, nebulous accusations were floated about that what happened was my fault.  My Father, Mother and sister circled the wagons, and refused to talk to me about it.

And so I lived the best I could and stumbled around a lot with questions that were not considered worthy of answers.  My Father became successful and lived the rest of his life well, so I knew that good had come out of it all.

Having had a few scary experiences doing white-knuckle Western riding, including a horse managing to runaway with me on the grass next to a major highway heavy with early morning traffic to New York City, I waited until recently to learn how to ride correctly.  After spending a great deal of time and money with teachers who in some instances seemed more scary than the horses, I found my horse Miles and myself in a dressage clinic with a great classical equestrian who saw through my issues and helped me realize I was blocked from achieving all my goals because of something, or things, that had happened in the past.

So I quit taking regular lessons and tried to focus both on my horse, learning everything from the ground up, building a relationship with him (I am still a fairly new horse owner — three years now) and using riding to help unleash the issues of the past.

Gradually things began to become more clear, and an extraordinary and unlikely pattern of events presented themselves to me.

As a child I was very healthy.  For some reason, this seemed to make my Mother unhappy.  (She was a horse of a different color, that I will discuss in another post).  But there were times when I would be completely felled by nausea and vomiting.  At that time she was always her lovelies and most conciliatory.  In fact, it was almost as though she were begging me to be comfortable being ill, knowing that she would be pleasant to me (our normal relationship was not).  At one point she even made a statement that puzzled me for years.  She said, “Why don’t you just die and go to heaven like all the other good little children.”  That made no sense to me at the time.  In hindsight I can say that she was a sick woman. But she was also brilliant and able to charm just about everyone, including me, whenever she wanted.  So her vicious and unbalanced streak was largely hidden by what seemed to be a sophisticated and witty gentleness.  Few who have seen her rage are ever again completely naive, but all of us were at one time or another almost hopelessly vulnerable to her charms.

Our typical family dinners, especially during my high school years, involved my being served a plate heaping with heavy and fattening Midwestern food — mashed potatoes, roast beef and gravy — in short, things I had no interest in eating.  I was forced to eat everything on my plate.  My pleas and tears went unheeded.  My Father said nothing.  My sister said nothing.  After dinner, my sister was excused to do her homework, while I was given the task of helping with the evening dishes.  We did not have a dishwasher at the time, and the process seemed endless.  My Mother, in particular, seemed to manage to find a spot on a dish or a piece of silverware that required doing the entire piece all over again.  I was utterly mystified at the time. Now I wonder if I was kept in my Mother’s line of vision to make sure I was digesting the dinner.

As I prepared to leave home for college, a sea change began to take place in our house.  My Father was coming apart, but, having no frame of reference, I was unable to properly assess what was happening.  It was a few months after I left that he nearly succumbed.  He ate poison.  Rat poison.

And so, while riding my horse, feeling more comfortable again in the saddle than with my feet on the ground, it began to occur to me years later that the riding block I was dealing with might in fact have had a connection to the fact that my Father was aware that my Mother had tried to make attempts on my life through poison.  And once I lived away from home I would realize that I was no longer becoming ill.  That realization did not dawn on me until much later, because all I could think about was this terrible near-tragedy that had happened to my beloved Father.

Die Zauberflote…has the opera come to life in Minnesota?

Let’s see if I can give you a brief rundown of characters that exist in the opera Die Zauberflote as well as in real life…rather than give you their actual names, I will share with you the names I have given them in my saga “Piper to the Alternative”…which is fictional, but drawn from real life…

Well, me, of course — Pamina, who knew the sound of Mozart’s music even before I knew his name.

My Father, Dorian Payne.  He was a metallurgist.  He gave me my flute.

My Mother, Mildred, the real Queen of the Night.  She was a very powerful witch, able to hurl curses and cause a room to turn white with her anger. Mildred also bewitches just about everyone except Pamina, who, because of the flute, sees right through her.  Mildred’s lack of the protection of secrecy around Pamina causes her to repeatedly rage at her daughter.

The QOTN’s Ladies in waiting — they manage to turn into wannabe’s…Starla, Karin and Mili…

Papageno — my dear friend Paul, who has supported me through a lot of angst…

Tamino — a bit of a mystery…listen to the sound of the flute and then you can decide…

The three children  — Karl, Krystof and Karin

Monostatos — Maurice Magus, Principal Flute at the Salzburg Northland State Orchestra, Christopher Rand, player, and Cranston Revellard, conductor (plus others)…

Oh, and of course Sarastro…but that may be another mystery:-)