​How listening to Madama Butterfly changed my life

Have you ever experienced a turning point? Not a phase or transition, but in a moment?

I used to have a business doing decorative painting. I tried to be all things to every one (which you may have heard is no way to run a business).

My joints were already far too old when I blithely began the painting business. As the years went on, I could feel the creaking in my knees and ankles when I climbed up and down ladders.

One Saturday, I was working on a job that was far too large; I had bit off more than I could chew. The work had taken days. I had to wear braces on both wrists and could barely hold the paint brushes.

While I worked, I was listening to the Met’s Madama Butterfly on the weekly radio broadcast on my little Walkman. Yes, to top it all off I was working on a Saturday.

Margaret Juntwait's description of the details of the Minghella production are vivid in my memory. And I suddenly and clearly realized….

This can’t go on.

I’d been mulling around my idea for making “opera bracelets” for a while and in that moment I knew it wasn’t some vague choice anymore, I had to do it because I simply couldn’t go on painting.

That day I began to take the first steps to changing my life completely. It didn’t have that much to do with the plot of that opera but I will always associate Madama Butterfly with that moment, dying to the old and starting something new.

Recently, I read the original book that Madama Butterfly is based on. Spoilers… she doesn’t die, or lose her boy….

I’m really glad about that.

Turns out, that performance of Madama Butterfly was also recorded Live in HD that day that I was teetering on my ladder with hobbled hands. Years later I got to see it! Click to see more on YouTube.

Click to visit the Madama Butterfly Bracelet