The Prince of Egypt soundtrack

Well, well...at last we meet again. After a rather random hiatus from blogging, writing --living in general for me, really -- I find myself doing a bit of spring cleaning and dusting off old hobbies, dreams, and other new/old interests that I never made time for. I'm experiencing a slow start to things at the moment, but as the old adage goes: "Better late than never."

How are you? It's been a while. Almost a year, in fact. For me, the last year involved trying to go back to school for my theater degree. Somewhere in the middle of that, I start experiencing money shortage and health issues; so instead of doing what I planned, life lead me back to the lifeless job I left for a brief month and a half I was in school, in physical, spiritual and emotional pain. Eventually, I found a doctor that heard enough of my complaining and sent me for an MRI, which located the source of the pain in a few bulging discs in my neck. As I am at a young enough age where these things could be resolved before any major surgery, I was sent to a very nice older gentleman who helped me get some of my mobility and life back through physical therapy. Is it expensive? Yes. But at least I'm getting myself back.

Hence, the reason I'm here, smiling cheerfully back at you in the form of this post.

Anyways, on to the reason we're all here! It's amazing that I could even remember that this is where we left off (and I still have to add some albums to the drawing bag that I've bought since I blogged last year), but I did. Here we go!

I actually only have one song from this entire album, "Through Heaven's Eyes." For some odd reason, that was the only song that I was able to transfer from Casey's music collection to mine. It's sung by Brian Stokes Mitchell, whose voice I only came to know after listening to a more recent Broadway cast recording of "Man of La Mancha" (my favorite musical, but I'll save that for another day). The guy's voice is hoss, and this song properly showcases this fact. Someday, I would like to watch a live performance of Brian Stokes Mitchell -- preferrably in "Man of La Mancha" again, but I know it's merely wishful thinking of experiencing that any time soon.

As a whole, I always thought soundtrack to the Prince of Egypt should have been taken and translated to the stage. I've spoken with countless others who have had the same sentiments. It would make sense, right? But what does corporate America do? They produce the embarrassment that is The Ten Commandments musical, with a cast that is headed by off-key Val Kilmer as Moses. I don't care if the man played Moses (spoken part) in The Prince of Egypt; did you see how awkward the guy's performance was? You don't do that to the theater. Just...no. And really, the show only had one good song in the middle of it, just after the Israelites cross the Red Sea. But I digress.

It makes me realize how little of the theater, the musical and Broadway I've thought of in the past year. I remember vaguely when it was all I could talk about, think about -- BE about. I had plans to revolutionize the stage -- for Jesus, of course. It was my life's passion to put something on Broadway that would make people think. I had even started working on a musical based on Relient K music in college (as I previously mentioned). Now...I could care less about that project. I numbly admitted to my husband the other day, "You know, I've lost interest in the theater. My dream isn't there anymore. It's just kind of...died." Or something like that. I was met with silence and a look of shock with a twinge of sadness. He knew how much it meant to me at one time; to hear this admission was hard on us both, I think.
"Well, what are you passionate about now?" he asked.
"That's just it. I don't know anymore," I labored softly.
"Well, maybe you can start working on old stuff. Dust off the story we started. Watch your favorite musicals so you can remember. We'll figure something out."

You know, some things about my husband are most frustrating -- the way his attitude about money, cleaning, do-it-yourself-ing can be. But for a man to still be here after all I've had to go through and helping me in some way to find my way back...these are the reasons I love and married this man. With him and some tips from my writer friend/old college friend Cid, I'm starting to dig myself out of the darkness and make goals for myself. Slowly, but surely...I'm finding myself and my passion again.

This is probably a lot more than I meant to say and even more than you cared to hear. Blame it on the fact that the first day of May 2011 is cold and rainy, leaving me with the TV, Fane the shih-tzu, my kindle and the house all to myself. But there's only so many minutes you can watch, times you can play fetch, pages you can read and places where you can loaf around before your fingers beckon you to come back and tap about until your brain turns to mush. Well, it's not exactly mush. In fact, this is the most stimulated my brain has felt in a while.

So this is what it feels like to be creative. I could get used to this.

[Well, I could also be sewing...but I'm too lazy to cut out patterns today. Meh.]