But what made these retrospective performances so moving was her ability, enriched by a lifetime of desire and human drama, to refocus her experience back into art.
In a detached, dreamlike voice, Ms. Das tells of her husband's brutish sexual inadequacy and her own lifetime of desire, often unrequited but sometimes consummated in affairs with other men and occasionally with women.
Gabriel sketched out the song's twisted narrative in a short vignette on the inner sleeve, telling of a young boy who had been beheaded by his friend Cynthia during a croquet match, returning as a spirit haunting her musical box, manifesting before her as a rapidly ageing spirit with "a lifetime's desires surg[ing] through him".
Among these are desires we can satisfy only if we live on for a few days, but also desires we cannot possibly satisfy within the span of a normal lifetime, and the desire for immortality itself.
As he led his clumsy partner across the dance floor, Zhou Aiwen, a 73-year-old retired cadre, spoke of a lifetime of unrequited desire but also of his commitment to Chinese tradition.
Those of us who follow Ms. Heche wherever she goes, yearning for a follow-up, will enjoy her turn as a femme fatale in "FATAL DESIRE" (Lifetime, Monday at 9 p.m ., a television movie that is exactly what you would imagine from the title.
The French are indeed more at ease with -- and realistic about -- the notion that one single person might not easily satisfy a lifetime of personal desire.
Of course you're frightened but you didn't come into this lifetime to avoid desire and risk and get to the finish line without a smudge, a scar or a difference in your point of view.
The countries they learn about no longer seem as foreign and the students, now seeing that people around the world are truly just like them, are more outwardly focused and primed for a lifetime of the desire to understand and help others.
