Puppetized Closet Vagina-Monsters

"Quick! Toss me the Summer's Eve!"

This morning I woke up with Arthur Resnick's/Joey Levine's "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" in my head....only Edward was singing to Bella: "Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got blood in my tummy - and I'm happy cuz that blood came from YOU!" I realized - to my horror - that my nocturnal brain had been writing TWILIGHT: THE MUSICAL while I slept...with rewritten covers from Zevon, Blue Oyster Cult, Guns & Roses, and ABBA's "The Visitors."

Full Disclosure: this isn't the first time this has happened.  Other examples include, POLTERGEIST: THE MUSICAL, featuring a puppetized closet vagina-monster singing - in the spirit of the plant from Little Shop of Horrors - Phil Collins', "Dance Into the Light."  HALLOWEEN: THE MUSICAL includes an aging Jamie Lee Curtis singing - in the spirit of Glen Close in Sunset Boulevard - Norma Desmond's, "New Ways to Scream." And who can forget Bill & Hillary's intertwining duet, with Bill crooning "Forever In Blue Jeans" intermixed with Hillary's, "Don't Cry For Me, Arkansas?"  The production's name is, of course, LIVING HISTORY: THE MUSICAL.

"Here's to hard choices!"

My brain - like a dog - gets into all kinds of trouble if left unsupervised.  Sleep tends to be my primary refuge from anxiety, but I often forget that it's my brain's refuge too - and the night allows the both of us to decompress.  I'm the textbook example of "sleep on it," and no matter how large a problem, I always wake up in the morning with some type of solution.   It's creepy to think about how "compartmentalized" my head can be - and how both my conscious and subconscious mind behave like two totally different entities.  I sometimes wonder if this is how serial killers are created? Hopefully, if I do have a Jekyll/Hyde-thing going, my alter ego will be more like Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor, rather than Jeremy Irons in Cronenberg's Dead Ringers.  I've never had any desire to give a woman a kinky gynecological exam, so I think I'm probably safe.

That being said, on those nights when I fall asleep quickly (and without worry), the end result is that my imagination gets to play - in ideas, rather than dreams.  That's the one and only time when anxiety/depression is genuinely FUN: I go to sleep hearing nothing but the breeze, but I wake up with Leslie Neilson in my skull...as the Captain of the Titanic, singing the theme to The Love Boat.  Or in the case of this morning, Robert Pattinson singing a silly sixties song.  I should also mention that both scenarios included about 40 backup dancers.

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Katherine Helmond from BRAZIL

It's no secret there's a link between creativity and mental illness, and scholars, psychiatrists, and folks with "Doctor" before their names have written countless papers exploring the connection.  Their common theme is simple: crazy people think outside the box, which gives them a different perspective in how they experience the world.  And "mental illness" doesn't just mean the heavy stuff (autism, schizophrenia, sociopathy, etc)...it can be something as simple as depression, which alienates someone just enough to keep their imagination active in adulthood. 

I suspect that when it comes to considering new ideas, most "normal" people are restricted (to various degrees) by their cultures, belief systems, and desire to fit in with everyone around them.   We chuckle at the past, when folks thought that the sun revolved around the Earth, but we also forget how scientists of the time were executed by the church for ideas that didn't fit society's norm.  We think that such ignorance is behind us now, but in the Arab/Muslim world, wars are still fought to defend outdated ideas of Islamic law.  We might not be so violent in the US, but consider how polarized we've become between something as simple as political beliefs.  I'm not a violent person, but when Nancy Pelosi talks down to Republicans, I've often fantasized about that scene from Mars Attacks, where Congress is reduced to smoldering red skeletons...and the only thing left of our shrill minority leader is a steaming puddle of Botox.   And yes, that scene includes back-up dancers as well.

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Miracle Grow

Anyway, going back to Edward's serenade to Bella, I was lucky in that what I saw was just a single "number"...and not a full-blown production. The title of this blog refers to my Poltergeist idea...where Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, and Zelda Rubenstein (squeaking like she did in Sixteen Candles) all dance in a chorus line mambo/Vogue...with a giant vagina-puppet behind them, animated, gyrating, and singing "Dance Into the Light."  The scene in my head is as vivid as a movie, and I can actually see the vagina's little mouth flaps, wet and icky, like the Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.  But like a modern day Giordano Bruno, I suspect that our world might not be ready for such musicals...Poltergeist, Twilight, or others.  And with that we have the downside to creativity: not only can creative people imagine new ideas, we can also imagine people's REACTIONS to our ideas...and though burning at the stake may seem a bit "1600," it seems very real to us.   

Especially when one wakes up with Edward (along with 40 backup dancers) singing Blue Oyster Cult's, "I'm burning, I'm burning, I'm burning for YOU."   

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