the fable

To know true power you can neither worship nor rule another

The Beggar and the Bird by Amber Gabrielle

Excerpts from the Fable...

Once upon a recent time, there was a beautiful Movie Star, named Ara Cane who had all the world at her fingertips. Ara was very adept at her performance on stage, on parade, or wherever the light caught her face. Her mother, the legendary actress Jane Faye of the late sixties pop culture, her father, film producer Kenneth Cane, ensured she was tailormade for this world. The only world she knew.

But a quiet flame began to burn deep inside her, a dreadful destructive fire that licked at her glory and silently mocked her peers. She began to despise her success and those who adored her. A terrible thought began to grow.... why do I deserve this? Do people admire what I do or only what I have? The questions kept arising, more every day until there was no room left in her mind but these taunting thoughts; why have I everything and others nothing? Are people stupid, is the world mad?

Ara started to throw herself into her charity work. Her attendance at her usual party haunt Buñuel's and a front row place at Prada was replaced by late nights researching the world-wide hunger crisis. Her personal assistants were delegated to perusing the files of her father's benefit organisation „EAT„ (Ethiopia Aid Trust)

As a child Ara had witnessed the effect of hunger. Her father had employed an Ethiopian activist, Sinait Aweke who had lost her daughter in the 1984 hunger crisis. Affectionally known as „Weke“, this woman became a major maternal figure to Ara. This colourful woman had opened young Ara's eyes to the inequality of the world. Now, as grown woman, Ara was realising her power to act in a more profound way.

One day, while revising lines off set at Universal, Ara heard a bewitching birdsong. She thought it was background music yet the following week while weaving in her home studio she 'heard' the same hypnotic tune. Yet despite the disquiet of hearing something that simply wasn't there, a gust of energy, hauntingly inspiring, accompanied this sound so that she felt as though her heart would expand so much that she might float up like a balloon and bounce off the walls.

Soon this voice began to possess her attention in less opportune moments... on set, at her favourite restaurant, at a cast meeting. But her fascination started to overtake her sensibilitiy and she withdrew into her head appearing distant to her peers. The melody became her reason to be, for with this sound she felt powerful, alive and connected to something which felt real in contrast to the contrived world of media where even the substance of a script was meddled with and manipulated out her hands.

Her slightly peculiar public behaviour began to show itself in a more antagonistic way. She could no longer withhold her innermost thoughts, which were uttered as callous remarks at press releases and interviews. Was it brutal honesty or distracted tactlessness? It was as if she cared less and less for the opinions of others. Part of her wished to test the motivations of the fickle heads of industry or the sincerity of the hapless hangers on.

However irreverent she could be, Ara managed to keep herself in check. She developed a sense for when she trod dangerously close to the line. Ara Cane was not so insolent as to destroy her career...

Yet lately she has been slipping. A dark mischievous shadow has emerged to play havoc with her social grace. Like an alter ego, a figment of her imagination appears and parodies her interactions with others. Part of her finds this delightfully entertaining and a light relief of irony yet another part of her fears that this imagination game is sending her off the edge of reason.

© amber gabrielle 2008