This morning I awakened wishing that I was in Vienna as Steph and I were four years ago today beginning the first on-location shoots for Mozartballs. I think I will never get over that beautiful city, nor do I ever wish to.
On this, the 200th anniversary of the death of Franz Joseph "Papa" Haydn, I would like to present this lovely video tribute created by the city of Vienna in honor of the occasion. There was perhaps no composer in Vienna who was loved more than Haydn.
I awakened this morning longing to be in Vienna. Perhaps its not the city so much as what the city means to me, but all the same, I wish I were there today.
The past two-and-a-half weeks have seen Steph and me beset with a whirlwind that has brought with it a season of change and transition in our lives, the likes that I've not seen in the nearly eight years since I was divorced. That's not to say that the past eight years have been a piece of cake, by any means, for every year, it seems, has been beset with its triumphs and challenges. It has been an interesting life. However, these past couple of weeks have brought a strange wind, that portends destruction, but rather, in its wake, is leaving the chance for a new start, a new life, and new opportunities.
I had a dream last week that I was sitting on a front porch of a house with my boss from the real estate office where I work. If you know anything about my boss, Grace, you will know that practically nothing alarms her. She's solid as a rock, and seemingly unaffected by anything. As we were sitting together sipping some tea, I looked to my right and about a mile down the road I saw a great, terrible storm cloud. It was black and churning and ominous, and it was coming right towards us. Alarmed, I turned to Grace and exclaimed, "Do you see that? It's coming right towards us!" In typical Grace fashion, she replied, "Awwwh...don't worry about it. We're in Oklahoma. We see stuff like that all the time." I turned towards it again, and it was even closer, and then suddenly a huge tornado fell out of the black cloud, and began consuming everything in its path. Then, suddenly, as it advanced towards us, it broke up into a bunch of smaller tornadoes, that kept coming down the road. What was interesting, however, was that although the tornadoes were consuming everything in their path, what they left behind in the wake was not destruction, but beauty! The sun was shinning, there were lush, green trees, fields full of green grass and flowers, birds singing--a virtual paradise. As the storm came closer and closer and eventually passed us, we were caught up in the wake, but we were never touched nor harmed, but left in peace, surrounded by all of this new beauty.
For a little less than a year, now, Steph and I have been intensely visualizing a dream that we have held since we have been together, and that Steph has had since 1994--that of moving to and living in Vienna. Around Thanksgiving last year, we were introduced to The Secret , and through the things that were revealed to us in that film, we learned about how living a life of joy, expectancy, and gratitude would open us up to a fuller and more abundant life through the Law of Attraction. Since then, we have been putting what we learned into practice, and now, a year later, we are seeing the beginnings of the harvest of what we have created. 
I know that my blog entries have seemed rather cryptic over the last couple of weeks, and indeed they have been. As much as I would love to, I am not yet free to indulge myself in shouting from the mountain tops, just yet. That time is soon to arrive however. Let's just put it this way--there is a will, we have a lawyer, and our dreams of Vienna will soon be a reality.
And I am so very grateful...
Steph found this wonderful live web radio station that broadcasts from the Stephansdom in Vienna! Here we are in Stillwater, OK, listening to Mozart's Lo sposo deluso, K 430, live from Vienna!
Mozart composed this particular opera in the spring of 1783, for the brand new Italian Opera Company, which included the young, newly hired, English/Italian soprano, Anna Selina "Nancy" Storace, the soprano for whom he later created the role of Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro. Mozart abandoned the production of Lo sposo deluso in favor of Figaro when the librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, proposed a libretto for it in 1785.
And to think, I'm listening to Mozart, live from the city where he composed this very work!
From the beginning of Steph's and my relationship we have dreamed of one day living in Vienna. There have been times when the dream has been stronger than other times, but it has always been there, and often it has been that dream that has sustained us through some very difficult and stressful times.
Vienna represents a number of things to us, but most of all, it is home. In our heart of hearts it is this dream that sustains us, and when the world seems to be falling apart around us, we will often cuddle next to one another and talk of a time when we will be in Vienna sitting in Cafe Diglas, or Cafe Frauenhuber, or walking down the Kärntnorstraße, hand-in-hand as we did nearly two years ago when we were on location for the filming of Mozartballs. For ten years, even before we met, Steph has been doing research about a move to Vienna--what is required, what it will cost, the cost of living, regulations, visa requirements, etc., and she has been a member of an online ex-patriot forum ever since we returned from Vienna in September of 2005. We have made contacts in Vienna, and are now waiting for the day when we will be in the financial standing to make the move.
It is little wonder, that when I was recently attacked by someone close to me about my "unrealistic" dreams of moving to Vienna, that I took tremendous offense, and reacted with anger and indignation. How dare she? This is our life's dream! (We even have a huge map of Austria pinned to our bedroom wall on which we have pasted pictures and sayings from magazines--our "vision board", as we learned about in The Secret.) It was as if I was walking down the street carrying a large, beautiful, perfect, shiny, red balloon and she came along with her long, sharp, pin and maliciously stuck it. Her words were sharp, insensitive, and cruel, and I chose to end the conversation very abruptly.
There are three things I won't let anyone mess with--my children, Steph's and my relationship, and our dreams of a life in Vienna. We don't know if our dreams will ever come true, but god help the person who tries to discourage us!
Slow down, you crazy child
and take the phone off the hook and disappear for awhile
it's all right, you can afford to lose a day or two
When will you realize,..Vienna waits for you?
And you know that when the truth is told
that you can get what you want or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get half through
Why don't you realize, Vienna waits for you
When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?
Steph and I have been working towards a dream of moving to Vienna in 2008, a dream that Steph has had for over twenty years and a vision that I only seriously bought into last summer after we traveled to Vienna together for the filming of Mozartballs. It has been so real for Steph that she is manifesting her day dreams into her dreams at night. I had not yet started doing that until last night when I had a dream of us in Vienna that was so vivid and real that I actually believed in my dream that we were there and I was genuinely disappointed when I awakened to find that it was only a dream.
You know what they say about dreams. "A dream is a wish your heart makes," and my heart is dreaming of Vienna.
Today's musical feature is Mozart's Piano Sonata for Four Hands in C major, K. 521
One of the very first past life memories that Steph and I experienced together involved a little field daisy. Steph had memories of our lounging on the ground with his head in my lap and me making daisy chains out of little miniature daisies and placing them on his head as crowns. It seemed like such an insignificant thing, but it was a very prominent memory that we both had. The strange thing about it is that neither of us had ever even seen this type of field daisy growing where we lived. It was during our trip to Laxenburg that we discovered the Palais garden lawns literally covered in these little, white, field daisies. We were blown away.
After this trip, I found that, like Steph already had, I had fallen in love with the city of Vienna. I've never been in a place where I felt so at home, nor so celebrated. As soon as people found out that I was a musician, I was treated as if I were royalty–nothing like here in the U.S. where you're looked down upon and treated like some kind of a deadbeat who needs to get a "real" job.
Steph found a website called ZoomVienna, full of the most beautiful photos of Vienna that I've ever seen. This young U.S. ex-patriot from Boston has captured the color, whimsy, and imagination of this incredible city through his outstanding, creative, and imaginative photos. It has become one of my favorite sites on the web.
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| Lynette Erwin |
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