Show Opens: Little Blue House: Poem
The shade of blue
Was waiting for me
The walks at night
The loving hardship
You held my hand
All the way through
And there were cracks
Bugs in the shadows
Far away dreams
A Regime hiding
But getting closer
Was sanctuary
The land, my mother
The shade of Blue
Was Home to me...
1st Song: Satie
I suppose that most of you have heard of Cuba. The biggest Island in the Antilles but really its just a small place shaped like a crocodile in the middle of the Cariblbean. Wherever you are in Cuba you are never too far from the Ocean
I am from Cuba, a land where music grows like vine, the land of the Palm Tree. Now my land is more a memory than a reality. But memory has consequences like everything in life and my memories of Cuba are the consequences that have, since the moment I left the island, shaped who I am today. I remember a deep longing to express the feelings and melodies I felt through poetic word and of course dance and music. Something in the Breeze there can brush away bad memories and inspire dreams that can go further than the borders. I would long to be on the stage there and in far away lands, surrounded by foreign buildings and understanding other languages. But dreams, tropical shades and a people that seemed to have been made out of music were not enough to keep away a lurking dark feeling that no matter your age a human being always feels. And that is the feeling of Censorship. To feel it, you don't have to know its happening, a person feels oppression in the soul and so there were days I would wake up in the verge of tears without understanding exactly why. How could I, with the sun shining and a family singing feel like crying? Well...To simplify: Censorship
But here I am, In a foreign building, speaking another language... but still telling the story of my country, my people, the Cuban countryman. A man that could absorb the beats from the soil and mix the earthy beauty with his sorrows and truth to create joyous melodies that could reach far beyond the Bohio and into the hearts of all people.
2nd Song: Satie
Storytelling:
Dreaming of leaving Cuba and leaving Cuba are two very different things. As a child I would paint pictures in my mind of America made of films and movie stars along with cool sneakers, sunglasses Michael Jackson and so on... Also America represented my father. My father got the opportunity to leave Cuba in 1980 when Carter made a deal with Castro that all political prisoners and their immediate families could be exiled in the US. My father was a political prisoner, and he left during that time. However, my mother did not want to leave all her family and country, so her and I stayed in the island. She knew the heartbreak that came with being an immigrant. So I stayed, but I got to grow up in a City where the buildings are work of Arts and the beaches were obviously God's work art and friends and neighbors become cousins after they visited a few times and drank coffee. My grandfather taught me about all sorts of music and my grandmother taught me how to sing and my mother taught me how to love poetry and till this day still my favorite poet is the Cuban poet Jose Marti. I was happy bike riding around Havana and taking dance lessons and eating my grandmother's cooking but when I would hear Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, The Beatles and the Blues... I would think oh god I got go to where that music comes from, I feel Jazz I want to sing the Blues I want to share my love I want to share my soul I have to go to America!
4th Song: Satie
Storytelling:
Independence individuality and curiosity were growing along with my years. And a fire in me kept telling me that I did not have much time in the island that change was coming. And at the age of 12 I felt my destiny upon me i felt my future heating up around me and about to explode. So one day sitting on the wet sand looking out into the ocean. Resting from the imaginative water games my cousin and I had been playing. I sat there content breathing heavily feeling the warm breeze drying my skin and feeling the protection of my aunt and uncle sitting beside me. aware of the the beauty of the moment. Suddenly, the fluidity was broken and my body got stiff with fear and courage simultaneously. It was when I heard: "Glenda, we want to ask you something" I looked at my aunt and uncle as innocent as I could, as if what they were not about to ask was not taboo and I had no incling as to what the question could be. I was acting like a 12 year old child. "Glenda, would you like to leave the country?" My heart sunk from the heaviness of the moment. I knew that leaving the country meant that I could not come back, that I had to leave my family...and the sea. I felt trapped and felt myself get older reaching for the answer. I did not want to hesitate so I said Yes! I would love to. And I ran into the ocean to play with my cousin. My destiny was with me, it had come, and would never leave me again.
5th Song: Satie
I was making a decision for us, that I knew was to difficult for her to make...So my mother left Cuba...for me.
This decision is one that tears the soul of many Cubans, because choosing between what one knows and the unknown, is a matter of Faith. And in the more immidiate sense is a matter of Love and Family. That was strongly the case for my mother.
She had risked being blacklisted and losing friends when she married my father, a political prisoner.
But leaving the country was another level of defiance and loss.
Mainly because of her own father.
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