Scarlet Fan

By Melody Lemond

Scarlet Fan is a magical, mystical fantasy story for dancers-at-heart.
Albeit light and lyrical, its themethe importance of balancing the outer with the inner, action with intuition, externalization with introspection (sun with moon, fire with water)is one whose relevance cannot be underestimated at this time when the imbalance of misdirected scattered fire energy does threaten to destroy this planet.
The story is alive. It is visual and rich with verbal imagery.
The reader, whether male or female, is lured to identify closely with the protagonist, Philomela (whose name literally means love song in Greek): her frustrations, confusion, the gamut of emotions and feelings she experiences as she undergoes the transformations necessary to reunite with her counterpart, the knight. The reader would derive inspiration from the words of Mars and Venus (embodiments of action and intuition respectively) and other mythical gods as they provide hope, encouragement, and guidance to assist Philomela in her unique quest. It is unique yet universal and one whose realization in this story suggests a glimpse of the beauty and power of the extraordinary destiny of our race.
While the archetype of the proverbial knight in shining armor may be considered (and justifiably) to be outdated and redundant, it does play a vital role in Scarlet Fan. For the knight, when his fierce and fiery ways are directed and inspired by intuition (Venus), he is capable here of epitomizing one aspect of the true ideal, the male aspect, when balanced and whole. Only then doth the twain meet. In his words, intuition comes first from the water.
(Its all inside us, but it cannot stay there forever.)
Hence the focus is on Philomela, the embodied female. It is she who must summon her own firethe courage, will, and determination to delve into the deep and bring to the surface her subterranean talents. She must allow the waters of the subconscious mind to trickle out and nourish this barren soil.
So yin meets yang, and powers within can sally forth into the world, like a beautiful rose with its petals unfurled. One sees the shining, magnificently velvety deep blood red of the outer petals. But one can only guess at the quintessence of its heart.
Mystery prevails.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Nov 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499025019

Melody Lemond

Melody Lemond was born in Sydney, Australia on October 2, 1950, into a large family – mostly of females. Her thirteen years spent in Catholic boarding schools were dark and stultifying, yet the clouds of suppression, repression and oppression gradually dissipated as she emerged into womanhood and emancipation during the 1970s. Melody wasted no time making contacts with artists and sensitive people of like mind. During the earlier part of the 1970s, she took yoga, dance and drama workshops. Then, after buying a donkey named Abdul and sometimes riding it in whatever demonstrations might require her input at the time, she moved to the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales where she traveled the ‘bush’ regions with her sister, giving drama workshops for children in isolated towns – sometimes in local country halls and often outdoors, receiving some acclaim from local media. It was after a brief, yet significant eye-to-eye encounter with an erect snake that Melody somehow knew that it was time to leave the bush for the city… and sold Abdul. This was a major decision, which required that she drop her well-laid plans of traveling around Australia with her sister (and donkey and cart) doing puppet shows. In the mid-1970s, Melody was drawn to the world of theater in Sydney, specifically to the genius of Lindsay Kemp (British) and his band of fine performers, then touring Australia. For a year she traveled with his company – a magical year (understatement), which primed her well for the advent, the following year, of Marcel Marceau, with whom she formed a close bond. The beauty and power of this significant relationship prompted Melody to enlist the aid of her guides to write a channeled book, utilizing the light of the then pervading inspiration. These compilations comprised much wisdom and guidance (mostly in prose), which Melody sought to follow while performing her solo performance, “Satin Dreamscapes”, a lyrical contemporary piece which played in the major cities in Australia as well as in U.S. for a brief season in 1980. On her return from U.S. Melody compiled her earlier channelings – held during the rise of the moon for a year after Marceau’s mid-seventies tour – into what was entitled: “Crystal Fragments”. During Marceau’s next tour to Australia in 1982, he corrected, at one of their meetings, the French conversations strewn throughout its pages. These limited edition ‘print-outs’ were distributed among friends. During the early eighties, Melody, continuing her writing and reading, assisted unemployed artists of all mediums to access government grants for group projects as promised by the Prime Minister of the time – yet to little avail. In 1984, Melody gave birth to a son, now a scientist and avid surfer – and in 1987 to a daughter, now a trained and talented dancer. She is presently living in Byron Bay, close to the sea and to like-minded people. As with her now grown children, she is riding the waves with anticipation and readiness. Contact the author at: [e-mail]

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Melody Lemond. 684936

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014918938

ISBN:   Softcover            978-1-4990-2502-6

             Hardcover           978-1-4990-2509-5

             EBook                 978-1-4990-2501-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 11/20/2015

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FOREWORD

Scarlet Fan was conceived as a result of a desire on my part, many years ago now, to create a dance-theatre spectacle. I was riding on the inspiration of truly great theatre, vis. the Lindsay Kemp Company, with which I travelled for a year during their stay in Australia in 1974—and the following year, of Marcel Marceau, with whom I shared a powerful and ‘intimately universal’ bond where, through the dark of the theatre, subtle psychic emanations were co-transmitted on ‘levels’ too fine to otherwise express. Fuelling this desire was my notion then that such states of shared delight ought not, ideally speaking, be contained within the physical, albeit sanctioned frame of theatre. And so I set myself the deliberate ‘artistic challenge’ of allowing it to flow beyond the construct of its four walls, beyond time and space. Idealism at its most naive, perhaps, yet I felt impelled.

And so for seven years I sent him, Marceau (who was at the time the knight in this story), ‘every flower and thing of beauty’ (Philomena), in the meantime co-channelling a compilation of ‘words from the gods’, with the intention of it resulting in a finished product adaptable to theatre. A short cut, perhaps. Also, and no less importantly to me, it was a way of maintaining contact with Marceau (for whom this artistic challenge was not shared; not in keeping with his own intentions). The channelling sessions, held each month during the rise of the moon for about a year (and which I sent to Marceau each month in the form of letters), comprised considerable guidance from beings who were happy to comply with my request: to present themselves as mythical gods. Interspersed among the chapters were also conversations in simple French with Marceau from wherever he was in the world. When he returned on his next tour seven years later (by which time the magic of my challenge showed itself to be no longer sustainable), Marceau corrected, during a couple of our meetings, those French passages. That compendium, ‘Crystal Fragments’, no longer exists.

Prior to my dispersing it among friends, however, I decided to embark on the task of selecting from it some segments which might lend themselves to a possible story that I might ultimately use as a theatre script. It was not feasible to create at this stage of my life a theatre production such as I had been guided to do—not to mention with myself