Orfeo, Monna Lisa, Gesù:

the diaphragm portal

Seriously, WHY would he turn around and leave her there?

Because Orfeo is aware that Euridice belongs there.

 

And he's also aware that he has a special permission to visit her whenever he pleases, and that she must be visited by him there, to ensure his being the greatest musician that ever was, a true human reflection of the Muse of Muses who not by chance proclaims in the first person:

IO LA MUSICA SON.

 

Every time that Orfeo (and you, and I, too) will be about to strike the cords of his lyre and sing, he'll be doing nothing but reaching out for his dead muse in the realm where she belongs - Death, indeed - finding his inspiration through to an imitation of death, thanks to a simulation of death.

Or, of eternity, if you prefer.

 

It's very technical, what I just wrote, you may want to go through it one more time.

 

In other words, the sacred moment of appoggio e sostegno - portrayed below in a very iconic, visual singing lesson by Leonardo, again, here disguised as his female counterpart, of better counterweight - is nothing but a rehearsal of death.

While we hold a note, we can't breathe, our life is suspended: hence, we're kind of dead.

 

I'm speaking about the very seconds when the air we've taken in - malgré nous, spontaneously, thanks to the will and intelligence of the diaphragm, muscle all our vital functions depend on - is held as still as possible, in order not to be wasted and not to disturb the emission.

 

(Which is the key to long coloratura: if time is not running, you breath isn't either.

If you're dead-slash-eternal), you can't die further, you're there already: just sit back and relax, we've got cookies.

Coloratura being a still frame in the director's cut of the Opera; a slow motion, a dilation of Time. A still life.)

 

 

Oh, the endless power of that apnoea, the focus it gives, the sparkle - aaahh!

Everything we want and need is in the otherwordly vision of that breathless souplesse.

We are just like Orfeo: for he's allowed into the Ades where all Arts and Visions belong, yet must re-emerge, alive and happily euridiceless, an eternal moment afterwards:

when, at the end of each phrase, the omnipotent muscle our mortal lives depend on will suck mortal air in us again to keep us alive in this mortal, finite world.

 

Nonetheless, we cherish a portal to the Beyond in our bodies: are we aware?

 

And it looks exactly like this:

 

Nothing is stronger than the will of our diaphragm.

It takes a reliable appoggio to keep such a massive portal somewhat forcibly open, still, for the few seconds we are allowed alive in the Dead to sing a musical phrase.

 

To ensure Christ's death, he got hit in the diaphragm (whence blood and water spilled: humanity and divinity, death and resurrection, mortality and eternity).

If you'd like a stroll among the Dead with me, my Virgo season offer expires today at midnight, Monna Lisa time.

 

 

Love,

M

VIRGO OFFER

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