Broad Rainbow Way IV

As I stand and look at the mural, a warm feeling comforts me. This feeling reminds me of the Iridium restaurant. This restaurant shows how one art form can be translated into another. Chicago architect Mozer, imagined how jazz music would look if it could become a furnished building. Everything, even the furniture, follows a curvy, jazzy theme. The color scheme radiates a warm amber and copper glow. Oddly, this glow radiates from the mural and bathes and soothes me. I no longer worry about what will happen to me or the mural.

I know this light does not just radiate from the mural or shine from within me. A guide at the Metropolitan Museum of Art points to an ancient Greek statue, and says that archaeologists sometimes make mistakes when they reconstruct statues from left over pieces. I am the ghost of the creator of that statue. I notice that a wrong arm from some other statue has been placed on it. Over thousands of years it has changed in texture and color. Like feeding and raising a baby, I went through a process of care to create it. Now, after over two thousand years, the role it plays and its appearance is far different from anything I could have imagined. Sadness engulfs me and a subdued blue light emanates from me and the statue and joins the amber light.

The guide speculates on the feelings of a painter that created a particular painting in the 1600's. I am the ghost of that painter, and see how my child looks hundreds of years later. It is well-preserved but looks strange in that new frame. When it was painted, I had many difficult to explain emotions, and even I could not adequately describe my feelings. But the painting still looks young and reminds me of the smell of freshly mowed grass. Vivid green rays shine from it and from me and join the amber and blue lights.

I enter the Museum of Modern Art, and see a red car with a body designed by Pininfarina. I am the designers of that car's body and motor. The car was able to move - like us. Burned fuel for energy and responded - like us. Built from simple parts to form a complex systems - like us. Young and full of spirit - like us. Shades of red rays curve with the regularity of mathematical waves, sway into the amber, blue and green lights.

I become the creators of the musical Kiss of the Spiderwoman. The movement of the actors, dancers, and props, onto and off of the stage, is so well synchronized. We do not notice when they enter or leave. Likewise, we do not notice the movements of organs within our bodies. The tragic novel by Manuel Puig gave birth to two offspring: the musical and film, both with the same name. Sundry colored lights shine from the novel, the film, the musical, and all their creators. Angst-ridden, dark swirls run through all these lights as they join the other ones.

I ride on waves of ever growing dancing lights. Paintings from various artists pop in and out of my mind. Rembrandt - a master of shadow, adds interesting shades. Turner - a master of light, adds engaging highlights. Signac and Seurat dab in their little pure colored dots. Van Gogh blends in his bold strokes reminiscent of his Starry Nights. Pablo Picasso contributes his geometric cubism and various styles. Dali waves in his distorted effects and clever visual tricks represented in his Metamorphosis of Narcissus. Complex patterns emerging from Mandelbrot's fractals weave themselves in. Finally, M.C. Escher's Relativity swirls the rainbow in a tricky way. Now I cannot tell up from down. I am lost in the laughter, toil and pain of the complex, three-dimensional rainbow that lives inside me and whirls around me. More colors and shapes dance into this ever-growing symphony.

Mysteriously, I hear Over the Rainbow from the motion picture The Wizard of Oz from 1939. Judy Garland sings, "Somewhere over the rainbow way up high . . ." But the lyrics that haunt me are: "And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true, . . . And the dreams that you dare to dream really do . . ."<<Writings>>