BEAUTIFUL CITY

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Charlie Chaplin once said, “Man’s humanity to man is greater than man’s inhumanity to man” – but recent headlines have made his statement difficult to accept.

As a creative person, I put little things like this together as a means to soothe my soul, while exploring the complicated questions I find at my doorstep each morning. I am usually led to some artistic work that has touched me in the past; and in this creative space, re-examine it with those questions in mind. This then leads to a bit of research which I, having absorbed as much as I can, begin assembling together as I would a jigsaw puzzle - hoping that a little of this and that will become one cohesive bit of something.

I mulled over Mr. Chaplin’s quote and, with each tragedy that followed, found that it was the reverse of his statement that really moved me – and to anger! All too often, has it not been man’s senseless inhumanity to man that stops us dead in our tracks in total and utter disbelief? The violence of the past couple of weeks has been targeted at some of the most vulnerable groups of our society – those in whose history have already withstood more than enough to earn the right to live freely, peacefully and respectfully!

But when tragedy strikes our communities, our nation and beyond, it is not only “they” who are hurt, but rather all of “We the People …" We are reminded that pain and suffering can carry us to a place of greater Light and understanding - indeed it is this belief that is central to each of the three major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. You see we're not so different, after all!

“Beautiful City” was written by Stephen Schwartz for the 2012 revival of his Tony-Award Winning Musical, “GODSPELL.” Its message is about exactly that – about not giving up in the darkness of despair, reminding us that instead, if we can hold onto the Light, our journey will miraculously carry us to a higher plain more wondrous and beautiful, than before.

Hunter Parrish performs this with a voice so perfectly poised and original, that I can’t even begin to imagine it sung by anyone else. Indeed it is his approach and artistic choices that truly makes the song what it is, and as Stephen Schwartz himself has said, “greater than I ever imagined it.”

In my thoughts I am reminded again of the children at the US Southern Border, whose faces after being separated from their families, are more telling than any amount of words could describe, written or spoken. This then directs me to another place where immigration is its history, Ellis Island – a source of ongoing inspiration since I, as a child of 11 or 12, first saw it and learned of its enchanted history. This history included that of my own grandparents, who had immigrated to the US through this port, from Sciacca, Sicily. And in 1990, quite co-incidentally, I was asked to gather a handful of friends and play a small but rather prestigious role at the inauguration of Ellis Island as the “National Museum of Immigration,” for which it has been known ever since.

Today, “Save Ellis Island,” a National Park Service private sector non-profit, is in the process of raising money to restore its additional 29 buildings, specifically the “Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital.” Once a prestigious teaching hospital, it has not been in use since 1954 when the island with its 33 structures, was closed and declared “Excess Federal Property.”

Photographs of the hospital are as exquisitely haunting as I remember those of the Main Building to be during its restoration. They show interiors, mostly, that are stormed, weathered and beaten. I offer these as a visual representation of how it feels to be an American today. In the video, they play the part of those upon whom trauma, because of the beliefs and opinions of our current leadership, has been imposed. “Beautiful City,” then, becomes the inspired musical counterpoint of this imagery.

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