My Pilgrimage, Chapter Twenty-Four: A Brief Pilgrimage
By Michael Moriarty
web posted July 31, 2017
We’ve returned from a lovely time in Montreal and the Fantasia Film Festival’s tribute to my former film director, Larry Cohen.
We, my wife Irene and I, are extremely lucky. We live in a most breathtaking corner of the Earth. British Columbia. We’ve had the privilege of traveling the world, frequently at no major expense to us.
We both have vocations we are excited about: Irene, photography and writing fiction and myself, composing symphonies, string quartets and now operas… plus creating weekly editorials for Enter Stage Right.
Irene was schooled in Vienna by nuns and I for four years with the Jesuits. I’m no longer Catholic for an assortment of various reasons. However, we wouldn’t trade our Catholic educations.
My four years with The Society of Jesus and their Classical Course of Greek and Latin? My father wasn’t too impressed.
He told the priests: “What good are two dead languages going to be for my son?” In the end? Right here and now? In my 76th year of life?
My education’s point of view on life has become, over the passing decades, increasingly breathtaking!
Awesome actually!
Yes, in short, I’m living life with more increasing wonder than I ever thought possible.
To have been put in daily touch with history so ancient it predates Christ by four centuries; and to have personally experienced that for four consecutive and very formative school years?!
For one, that brief pilgrimage has made the legendary poet, Homer, a literal friend whose image hangs on my office wall.
And the Italian Renaissance?
Because of Ancient Greece, the artists of 15th and 16th Century Europe, A.D. seem almost contemporary. The images on my wall of Michelangelo and Bach are almost awaiting a conversation with me.
Eventually I hope I will have those talks.
It is now all part of my nine opera magnum opus, The Lionhead Ring.
Inspired… or rather provoked by the ugly and undeniable anti-Semitism within Richard Wagner’s own life and “major work”, The Ring of The Nibelungen, my replies to it are collecting every single millisecond of my life and putting many of them under a microscope.
I’ve calculated that I must have, at the least, 8 more years to achieve my vision.
My life, along the way?
So far?!
Divine!!
Why?
That is my secret.
Perhaps, if you and I are lucky enough, the voyage will be completed and my hoped-for triumph will be available for your experience.
While waiting, if you are at all interested, a few of my previous musical accomplishments can be sampled here: 77gelsomina.
Enjoy, if you can!
If not?!
God bless you, anyway!! 
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty.