BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

I was deep in my performance era when I first saw Moulin Rouge. (The movie. With Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor.)

I was 32 years old. I was enjoying an abundant and fruitful theatre career and I was deeply in love (and would be married within the year).

I was profoundly impacted by this movie.

I smiled like Ewan McGregor the entire way through - what joy he emanated from living in this glorious city; singing these sublime songs and being tragically in love.
I was in awe of the unabashed theatricality of it all, how excess was celebrated and how beauty, truth and love really could be the goal; of “how wonderful life is, now you’re in the world.”
I celebrated the screen ode to theatre (of course, Baz’s speciality.) What resonated is that my dreams could come true; one could in fact sing and act on screen.

Moulin Rouge remains on my top 4 list (if I’m ever asked on Letterboxd) of favourite movies.

Fast forward 23 years.

I was in Melbourne in December. My first holiday as a single mother with my three teenage children. I spent hours at dawn journaling and reflecting on what parts of myself I had lost in those 23 years.

For reasons too many, complex and understood in hindsight, I never set a foot on stage from the day I got married.

There was no doubt that the performer, dreamer and aspirer was long gone.

It just so happened that Moulin Rouge was playing at the Regent Theatre. (don’t you just love it when life hands you these gems on a silver platter?)

I spent a fortune on amazing tickets. I wanted my children to get up close and personal with the immersive experience I knew this was going to be. I wanted them to FEEL what I used to do, to be transported, to see magic, and for their minds to be blown.

They were.

My fizzing children bounced, sang and teleported home in rapture.

“Core memory unlocked,” my son proclaimed.

Job done.

And me?

I was very aware of watching the splendour unfurl from the perspective of wistful remembrance. And I was deeply disturbed at my sense of all this being behind me. So I spent the rest of my holiday reflecting on what impacted me so much the first time, and if those values had indeed shifted.

I sat with Truth, Beauty and Love. The Bohemian values.

I recognised how I had woven them into a muted, complex reality that could accommodate how much I had strayed from their stark clarity.

I became aware of the endless chorus of “lower your expectations” that muddied the waters.

I dissected what each concept embodied and how I could/should align them with my experience.

These Bohemian ideals have been given a “folly of youth” lens: unrealistic, idealistic, impractical. Too hard. Too young to understand how complicated it gets.

But truth, beauty and love are not complicated.

People are complicated.

Truth, Beauty and Love are simple.

Truth, Beauty and Love are the longings of the human soul. They are what make us human, and what make us divine.

They are eternal North Stars that can artfully and practically guide us in life, love, art and even business. They are independent and co-dependent. They are finite and eternal. They are everything and nothing. Transient and intransient. They are matter and energy. They are the mystery of life.

I finally understood that the less I let them guide me, the less free I was, the less me I was.

Diminish one, diminish all.

I designed a guide to allow them to become more impactful touchpoints in my life and work. Here it is: