sweet baboo & the maestro

john f. marok. birdhouse. 36"x48". oil/canvas

 *****

sweet baboo used to sneak around the back of the opera house during the days of rehearsal when the performers, musicians, artists and the maestro himself would come out for the recuperative freshness of a breeze, the restorative energy of sun light, the relaxing exhalation of a smoke. baboo hid in a tree beside and above the door where she had previously seen the maestro pacing, drinking, scribbling and talking out loud, gesturing with his hands, making abstract sounds with his voice that approximated the sounds of musical instruments. one afternoon, having waited for hours in her conifered hideaway, baboo had fallen asleep and was unaware that the maestro had come outside.  she fell out of the tree onto his head, momentarily stunning them both out cold. when they regained clarity neither knew where they were or what had just transpired, took a minute for them to recollect their thoughts, memory, to feel their feet on the ground.  the maestro's first impulse, after standing up and helping baboo, was so startling, so singularly focused, so trance-like and emphatically shut off from the world that baboo could do nothing but observe the manifestation of his swelling, tidal-wave of energy. the maestro wiped his hair back, sat down, shivered his head, dipped his pen into ink, began to write with alacrity, fierce-full force, unequivocally targeting and resolving the unsettled fragment of the opera, the second and third acts which had, for several months, caused him to be sleep deprived, to be full of melancholy, to be wretched, despondent, inconsolable and, most worrisome, to threaten his financial backer with spiritual blackmail, emotional extortion, psychological dragooning.

*****