EPISODE 510: WE GOOD.
Cats and the B52s and Stephen Sondheim and Timothée Chalamet will save us.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Let me start with the best thing ever/when in isolation:
I don’t know what it is, but watching cats watch dominoes is really really soothing.
So how are you enjoying your government-mandated sleepover/snow day? (Neither of those analogies really work, I know, but they’re the ones that keep coming to mind!) I’m sure it hasn’t been all sugar pops and fairy tales – or if you’re a parent maybe it has!
However it’s been going, I hope you’re taking time to step back and see how much you’re actually achieving these days. You’re doing this crazy thing. We’re all doing it, day by day. If I had told you in December this is what you’re life is going to look like in March, could you have imagined it even being possible? I know I couldn’t.
And yet here we are, watching cats watch dominoes and letting Rick & Morty give us legitimately important advice (Note: Language).
(You may need to click on this in order to see it; it’s the first video on their page.)
I want to send this to pretty much everyone who loves Rick & Morty because many of them seem like they really still need to do this and stop wandering around laughing/lying on beaches.
Originally I was supposed to be in New York right now. There were a bunch of reasons, but the one that excited me most was that today is Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday. If you don’t know Stephen – well, you probably do know him a little, because some of his musicals have been turned into movies. Sweeney Todd? Sondheim. Into the Woods? Yep. West Side Story? That too.
Also “Send in the Clowns”, “I’m Still Here”, “The Ladies Who Lunch”, the songs in Dick Tracy and that song that Kylo Ren sings at the end of his divorce from Black Widow.
You can see the influence of his work in Rent, Hamilton and also those insanely hilarious SNL musicals that John Mulaney does about bodega life in New York.
Some of you are totally with me right now and I bet the rest are like, um, cool, when can we get back to the cats? Which is fair. Sondheim is somehow still not that well known to the broader American public.
It’s not surprising. He did crazy things like a musical that starts at the end with all the characters hating each other and then follows them backwards to their excitement and joy as they left college (Merrily We Roll Along: in the original production they hired mostly unknowns right out of college so that the idealism of the ending would really land; the audience didn’t get it, and the show closed after 16 performances. There’s a whole documentary on Netflix about it, Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, and it is devastating and amazing.)
In Sunday in the Park with George, an entire musical written about this Georges Seurat painting, the story takes a 100 year time jump between acts, and begins the second act with all the characters in the painting themselves singing.
Sondheim did a musical in which almost every song is a waltz, just for the heck of it (A Little Night Music), and another (Company) about a guy having a midlife crisis that has almost no plot at all, but some of the greatest songs ever about the struggle to be vulnerable and love another person. He also did one starring all of the individuals who have attempted to or succeeded at killing U.S. presidents. It’s called Assassins, and yes, it is dark.
Also a fascinating look at how the idea of assassination is wrapped up in the ideals of the nation.
Also a total failure the first time it was presented off-Broadway.
And all of that is not even counting the fact that other than West Side Story his most well known piece is about a mass murdering barber who had his victims baked into meat pies. You know, typical musical stuff.
Personally, his work always just seemed to be there waiting for me when something important happened in my life, with insight and welcome. Finally, you made it.
Even now, in the midst of our current craziness, I find so much wisdom and solace in Into the Woods, the story of all your favorite fairy tale characters getting what they want (Act One), and then in the midst of a self-created catastrophe which threatens to destroy them all (Act Two), they realize what they wanted is not actually what they need, and that what they really need above all is each other.
(I’m not a fan of the movie version, but the theatrical production (which is actually on YouTube with eh quality, or you can rent it from Amazon cheap) is worth watching right now. Bernadette Peters stars as The Witch from Next Door.)
Sondheim even did a TV musical in the 60s about a writer who discovers a group of people secretly living in a department store, never going outside. And at the heart of it is a girl who yearns to leave her “house” and see the world.
Tell me you can’t resonate with you that right now!
(It’s an hour long, on YouTube. Evening Primrose is the name. The music is lovely.)
I feel like there’s so many groups of people I’m more aware of right now than I am normally. Right alongside emergency services and doctors there’s grocery store workers. Food service people. Maintenance workers. Postal and delivery agents.
And I’d also include in that group artists. Where would be right now if many many people hadn’t said at some point in their life, “This may sound crazy, but I’m going to spend my days writing songs/acting in movies/drawing cartoons.”
So, to all the Stephen Sondheims of our world, and especially The Stephen Sondheim himself, I raise a glass. In gratitude and thanks, here’s to them. And Stephen, here’s to you.
If you spent the last five minutes reading this and rolling your eyes, you may very well love this:
And if you love Sondheim, here’s some college students performing the finale of Merrily. They are perfect.
I don’t have much else to report right now. It’s just day by day, you know? And a lot of it spent in really different ways than my usual. Even my social media use is way down. I love sharing fun tweets with you guys, but there’s just so much HERE IS A NEW PIECE OF INFORMATION THAT WILL SCARE YOU READ NOW there and that I just can’t.
Here’s one tweet I saw in recent weeks that I really loved.
Preach it, Anthony.
Come to think of it, here’s another.
And if you liked that second one, here’s a whole rabbit hole of something even better for you:
Here’s two more things I’ve seen recently that are a fine and soothing distraction from reality: Timothée Chalamet “et” Louis Garrel speak French.
More French, please!
Also, more people make mugs!
I’ve been doing a public Mass on Sundays on my Facebook page. If that is the kind of thing you like, you can find it (and me) here. You don’t have to be Catholic or religious. All are welcome!
I also posted a week of Little Spiritual Exercises here last week. Based on views it seems like people really enjoyed them, so I’m going to keep doing them. (By the way, if you were following along and wondered what happened on the weekend, I’m sorry! I’m just going to do them weekdays, but I did not tell you that!)
For the moment I’m still going to post them here. But I think I will soon migrate them into their own newsletter. So if your feeling is PLEASE THIS IS NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR, give me a week (or less) and they’ll be gone, I promise!
But for now, they’re still here, and so I’m going to end with one.
Keep looking after yourselves. We are getting through this. And even though we’re all apart, we’re not only doing it together, we’re all whether consciously or unconsciously doing it for each other, especially the most fragile among us. I think that’s a pretty incredible thing.
LITTLE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES: DAY SIX
Arise.
Sit in a quiet, comfortable place with your phone off. Close your eyes. Take some deep breaths.
When you feel at ease and present in the moment, let the song below play. Keep your eyes closed and your heart open. Welcome whatever feelings or thoughts it stirs in you. Allow yourself to just be.