The mind churns / the heart yearns

There was a time in my life when I listened to nothing but musicals. This was before I discovered Oldies and would tune the car radio to 92.5, Champaign, Illinois’s last real oldies station. That in turn was before I discovered top 40 radio, some time between my first high school dance and my second.

           

The point is, for years it was Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera and Man of La Mancha and Cats and Crazy for You. When, in second grade, I met the girl who would be one of my very closest friends, she was wearing a Damn Yankees shirt. (I knew it was a show, but I was still shocked.) Later I went to see her perform in Sunday in the Park With George, in Gypsy, in Fiddler on the Roof, in A Chorus Line. In high school I saw her in Bye Bye Birdie and The Pajama Game. We didn’t share any lines, but we acted alongside in Anything Goes. I don’t remember if she was in South Pacific, but I saw that too. She invited me over to her house and played me Cabaret for the first time (we were twelve). I invited her family to join mine at a performance of Sweeney Todd. At intermission she pointed out that I had neglected to mention the undercurrent of cannibalism.

           

Then, for years, nothing. The theater bug bit me, and by theater bug I mean the straight play bug. I could never sing or dance or compose music and so I thought if I were going to act, if I were going to write, it better be without music. I stopped attending musicals if I had the chance to see a play instead. Plays were weightier, I felt. They would help me with my writing. They would help me understand the world.

           

Sure, a couple musicals slipped in under the radar. With my aunt and cousin I went to see Spring Awakening (awesome). With Roommate J I went to see Wicked (less than awesome, but more on that later). In London, I took time out of researching and checked out Billy Elliot (really, really great). I saw Hair (revelatory) with my parents twice. It provided a soundtrack to my junior year of college, but it didn’t change my life.

I hadn’t sworn off musicals entirely, obviously, but I was treating them like I treated romantic comedies (and I used to watch a lot of those too): every once and a while, one was fine, but there wasn’t enough substance there to engage me.

           

Through it all, there was one musical I would only touch with two ten foot poles. Sure, I watched the movie like everyone else did. I even downloaded a few of the more famous melancholy songs (original cast, bien sur) to my iPod, but if there was one thing I was not, it was a Rent head. Rent fans, I knew from my many theater festival experiences, were unspeakably annoying. They were prone to bursting into “Seasons of Love” or “La Vie Boheme” in public, talking as loudly as possible, and bad dye jobs. They thought they were incurably edgy; they were as edgy as you can be when your mom drives you to Theaterfest in her minivan and picks you up early for youth group. They had never been to New York, but if they did, I assumed, they would never find their way out of Midtown. They were very open-minded, which was great, but I couldn’t help but wish they’d be less open-mouthed. I couldn’t see Rent without also seeing its legion of awkward and loud middle and high school fans.

           

(In case it’s not abundantly clear already, I will pause here and say that, on occasion, I can be a raging snob.)

           

When I started work three weeks ago, I set up several stations on Pandora. For those of you unfamiliar with how Pandora works, all you have to know is that you pick an album, or a song, or an artist, and the website will then create a stream of songs for you that resemble that album, or song, or artist, in some way. On a whim, I picked the new cast recording of Hair, hoping that it would turn into some Hair/Spring Awakening/audacious oldies songs hybrid.

           

Instead, after playing a few Hair songs to get me started, it switched right over to Rent. Now, I wasn’t about to waste one of my precious thumbs-down-switch-the-song-now chances (they cut you off after a while) on a song I actually kind of liked, so I let “One Song Glory” play on while I typed away. I hadn’t heard it for a while and I had forgotten how much I liked it, so after I finished a sentence I actually paused to give it the thumbs up.

           

After a while I got sick of listening to Berger’s out of school songs while I was chained to my desk, so I started listening to my hip hop station instead. Then I switched to Vaughan Williams. I didn’t switch back to my Hair station again until yesterday, and then it was to find a million Rent songs laying in wait for me.

           

I loved it. It was great. They didn’t play “Seasons of Love.” They didn’t play “La Vie Boheme.” Even if they had, I don’t think I would have objected. Instead, I found myself, mouth open, gaping at my computer, listening to “Santa Fe” and “Without You,” getting all verklempt because those beautiful voices were singing those songs just for me. I almost broke my mouse hitting the thumbs up button. I typed with my fingers figuratively crossed for the rest of the day hoping those two songs would come back and when they did, I silently sang along, stopping only when the President and CEO walked by on her way home.

           

I haven’t known struggle, not really, although I’ve struggled plenty. Nor am I overly fond of hipsters, which those people in Rent most certainly are. I have actively chosen not to starve for my art. I really enjoy taking showers. And I still can’t quite shake the image of a busload of over-privileged, white, Central Illinois teenagers, who would die if they got upwind of a real junkie, butchering the emotion required to sing those songs. So I’m not exactly thrilled with my transformation, at age 23, from a self-assured young professional-ish woman who not two months ago was over identifying with “Do You Hear the People Sing?” (first, overlooked hint that the musical thing was back) into someone who is playing Rent songs on repeat and feeling it in the depths of their soul.

           

Yes, reader, I went right home last night and purchased “Santa Fe” and “Without You” (original cast, bien sur) and carried my computer around my apartment while I performed mundane tasks so that the music and I would not be separated.

           

Maybe the thing about musicals is that you can’t force the connection and that, if you let things happen naturally, one day a particular song or turn of phrase will sneak up and attack you from behind. I certainly believe that to be true of movies and books, and regular, non-plot-driven songs, so why not musicals as well? I think I have to give myself permission to find inspiration in unlikely, sometimes unwanted places.

I may have started already. After all, I wrote something like five pages of my current fiction project while listening to “For Good” from Wicked on repeat. I didn’t like the show, but that song just gets at something. The same could be said for “Santa Fe” and “Without You.” If I can forget all my preconceived notions, maybe I’ll become the ideal listener, or the ideal viewer, and I’ll be able to find something new and unique in a show everyone has done to death.

So am I a musical person again? Not yet. But my Hair station got a lot of play today, so we’ll see. I already bought tickets to The Book of Mormon in December (War Horse too, but that was to be expected). I don’t expect it to change my life, but when it comes to theater I should know by now to expect the unexpected.