How to Sing Your Own Opera

First, cut and fold your life into four acts:

ACT I

1. Discover someone on the street.
2. Take this stranger to a cafe where the sixteen other customers, all healthy vibrant students who are constantly dancing around even while they are seriously rooted to their chairs, mistake you and the stranger for two longtime lovers still intoxicated by each other's presence.
3. Drink coffee, eat pastries, become lovers intoxicated by each other's presence.
4. Wake up happy in your new lover's bed.
5. Tell your new lover how happy you are to be waking up in the most beautiful bed in the world.
6. Show shock and horror when the door to your new lover’s bedroom shatters and sixteen healthy soldiers vibrantly march in and arrest your lover.
7. Lament the loss of your lover.

ACT II

1. Wander in despair through the streets until you discover two members of your lover’s family.
2. Learn from Family Member A that your lover is an opium addict.
3. Learn from Family Member B that your lover is not really an opium addict any more. Learn also that your lover is about to inherit a substantial amount of money from Family Member C who is about to die from an incurable disease.
4. After witnessing the argument which forever separates Family Member A from Family Member B, become so confused that you actually go to visit the mountain hospice. Make grave gestures to the sixteen nurses and doctors who try to prevent you from seeing Family Member C.
5. Embrace Family Member C, who suddenly appears and banishes the sixteen nurses and doctors from the room.
6. Learn that Family Member A is eccentric and nasty, perhaps even an artist, while, on the other hand, Family Member B is a humble though hardworking government employee. Thank Family Member C by saying a few words of wisdom. Say: "Always trust gypsy violin players."
7. Imagine your lover, lamenting alone, in the prison cell.

ACT III

1. Return to the cafe to cry. As you cry, do not help but overhear the conversation of the sixteen healthy but vibrant students. Cry the loudest when you learn that your lover is going to be executed for treason.
2. Enlist the help of eight of the healthiest and most vibrant students.
3. Unwittingly torture your lover by sneaking words of love into the prison.
4. Plan a daring rescue.
5. Coincidentally encounter Family Member B on the street and learn how Family Member A, more con artist than artist, is also a seller of opium, and a vile anarchist who manufactures false evidence — the very same false evidence which was used to arrest and sentence your lover.
6. Rush with Family Member B and the eight healthiest and most vibrant students to the prison. Do battle with eight healthy but not so vibrant prison guards.
7. Show surprise when Family Member B mysteriously disappears during the battle. Show greater surprise when the not so vibrant prison guards crush, batter and beat the students. Show even greater surprise when the door to your prison cell slams shut. Wish aloud for death — or something else — which would be better than your present situation.

ACT IV

1. Bitterly rejoice at the announcement of your own execution, remark gracelessly on the irony of the date, lament as never before the cruel fate which will bring your lover so close to you — again by your side (!) — and yet so far away — tied to another stake (!!) — before the same firing squad (!!!)
2. Imagine a daring rescue.
3. Find yourself tied to a stake, your lover tied to a different stake, before a firing squad of twelve somber soldiers who await the arrival of their evil commander.
4. Refuse the blindfold. Look instead into your lover's eyes.
5. Show shock and surprise at the arrival of the evil commander, who is none other than Family Member B. Dismay at the evil commander's melodic list of crimes: giving opium to your lover, slandering Family Member A, other shockingly wicked abuses of power in the quest for possession of the family fortune. Show the greatest shock of all when you learn that it was Family Member B who spread the poisoned peanut butter on Family Member C's toast, and it was this poison, and not an obscure disease, which has crippled Family Member C.
6. Regret the raising of the rifles, but pretend to kiss your lover one last time.
7. Do not listen to the sound of the shots.
8. Falling dead, do not pay attention to the arrival of Family Member A, four healthy but not so vibrant students, and Family Member C, now fully recovered after having been brought an antidote by an old wandering gypsy violin player. Do not pay attention as Family Member C and Family Member A, along with the four healthy but not so vibrant students, fall upon Family Member B, the evil commander, who dies. Do not cheer as the somber soldiers surrender. Pretend not to feel the tears which fall upon your grave or the grave of your lover.

“How to Sing Your Own Opera” was originally published in Tank, Issue #12, November 2000.