Passion

I have pretty much dissected most of the characters in the Phantom of the Opera, so I thought I would start prodding your brains to think about emotions.

Do any of you remember Mr. Spock on Star Trek -- the alien without emotions? Pretty sad having to live your life with only logic, never experiencing love, hate, jealousy, passion, lust, obsession, despair, joy, unhappiness, and fear. Emotions are powerful feelings that drive our thought processes and influence our behavior. Let’s face it, being a Mr. Spock in life would be pretty boring. What’s the fun in that? Probably the only advantage would be you’d never have to experience the pain of a broken heart.

I must confess when I was born, I was overly wired with emotion. Definitely an extremist. When I feel emotion -- I feel emotion. I laugh hard. I cry hard. Maybe that’s why I get so wrapped up in stories like the Phantom of the Opera. I fall hard for things that deeply touch my emotions. I’m also fascinated by emotions and how it drives us as human beings.

Passion in the Phantom of the Opera, especially in the play and movie, is powerfully portrayed throughout the story, exhibited undeniably in our three main characters - the Phantom, Christine, and Raoul. It’s more powerfully emphasized between the Phantom and Christine. Just watch the Point of No Return and you’ll need a fan to cool you down.

Passion is defined as a powerful or compelling emotion of love or hate. Taking the love side of passion, the emotion is filled with strong love, mixed with sexual desire for another person. We can probably debate whether the Phantom’s passionate love for Christine was mixed with a little obsession, but there’s no doubt he had passion for her. It was an emotion that must have been a pretty compelling and driving force for him, having never been with a woman. He’s more than willing to experience passion, as he sings to her the questions about the passion that awaits them. It’s quite obvious that Christine is drawn to the Phantom in a passionate way, more so than to Raoul. Probably a little bit of that “bad-boy” attraction going on along with it.

A few weeks ago we had one of those water cooler moments at work with a few of the girls talking about the Phantom of the Opera and passion. Some of the women were married, some single, some divorced. I found it interesting that the majority of them had never experienced the emotion in their own relationships. They’ve never known what it is to have or feel passion with another man in that sense that we see in the Phantom of the Opera. Wondering about me, are you? Yes, I’ll admit, I’ve been one of the lucky ones. I’ve been consumed by the emotion myself. Unfortunately, he’s long gone and with another, but the memories are as hot as ever.

Why is it that we don’t find more passion in our relationships? Seems like the only place a woman can find it today is inside the cover a romance novel, written by another woman, who either knows the emotion first hand or dreams about it like the rest of us. It’s an emotion we all seem to want to feel and have consume us, but few ever experience it first hand. Of course, I’m speaking from a woman’s view here. If there are any men who read this blog, please chime in and give me the man’s take on this!

Passion - We can experience it, dream about it, and lose it. It's an emotion that I think is a bit elusive -- hard to find - hard to keep. I wonder why.

Passionately yours,
The Phantom's Student

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