I'm in NYC for work--so I went to hear two of my favorite living artists have a chat. In fact maybe that "of" doesn't belong in the sentence. I think Tony Kushner and Stephen Sondheim are my two favorite living artists.
I have refused to read Sondheim's recent books (although I have beautiful copies sitting on a bookshelf--a gift) because he is too mean to other people and those rare pleasures I get from art I seem to protect as vociferously as I protect my vulnerable, private self. (In fact, one of the many small arguments my dad and I had were when he started talking to me during a performance of Billy Elliot and I was outraged he would want to know the name of the lesbian talk-show host during the show when it is one of the rare things I've enjoyed in the last few years. I was abrupt (and pissed he would talk during the show--he never used to do that sort of thing). He was furious I was abrupt and even though I apologized (3 times) he brought it up the following week and months later.
While I love Sondheim's work, I don't really care what flaws he finds in "It's alarming how charming I feel" or "to make two lovers of friends." I just want to enjoy those few transcendent moments when they come. Why look for the flaws in things of beauty? (FWIW, I saw Porgy and Bess this weekend also; some amazing moments. Audra McDonald is my favorite stage actress, but the whole was less than the sum of the parts. The overture is thrilling and several other moments were as well, but it didn't add up for me. I think the story is just so weak, compared to the music. I care about characters, and I want a character I can identify with who comes to some revelation during the show.)
Much of what I learned about the world, I learned through the scores of Sondheim. It became a way of understanding that other people felt left out; that I was not such a freak. I would say from the time I was 18 until I was, maybe 25, Sondheim was the lens I used to try and understand myself and my world. This blog would never exist if that lens had been the Brontes, or Jane Austen, or Katharine Hepburn.
It was so interesting to hear Kushner and Sondheim's discussion about writing; Sondheim writes lying down, like being on a sofa at the shrink, because that is where the soft underbelly is. Kushner said he couldn't and did almost an imitation of a hedgehog to show how protected he needs to be in writing. (Now, Kushner clearly writes in amazingly beautiful, vulnerable, multi-layered characters--, not only did he write Angels in America; he wrote Caroline or Change.)
At the end of the evening, Kushner asked Sondheim to read a poem he recommended: "Love Note to a Playwright." Sondheim said he couldn't read the end without crying. Kushner said "I know." Sondheim read the poem and cried. It is a comic poem about how great Sheridan was, because he blew off all his friends to conserve his energy for the writing that matters. It ends:
Who, using up his mail [n.b. correspondence from friends and others] to start
An autumn fire or chink a crevice,
Cried, "Letters longer are than art,
But vita is extremely brevis!"
Then, choosing what was worth the candle,
Sat down and wrote The School for Scandal.
Sondheim wept. I've seen him speak in person maybe a dozen times. I've seen and heard many more interviews. I've seen him sort of get shiny eyes, but I've never heard him sob. And I wondered if Sondheim is using this poem the same way I use Sondheim's work--to realize that he is not alone, and other people made the same sacrifices he did. And it was worth it. So basically, the way I read it is that Sondheim identified with this because it said "an artist has to make choices to put his (and it usually is a he) art above the people who care about him."
I loved Sondheim because he showed me how you can let down your persona with people you trust, but I think I adopted other things from his work as well. I sort of adopted this way of viewing the world. But, in truth, I'm a pretty mediocre "artist." Maybe Sondheim wants to sacrifice the people who care about him. And he wrote Sunday in the Park with George and Company and things of transcendent beauty. I, on the other had, can't sell my novel. And even if I did and it became a best seller, it is about as meaningful as a Katharine Hepburn movie. It deals with issues of substance in a sweet way; but it is no Das Kapital. And I sometimes wonder if that was the choice I wanted to make, or a consolation prize: 'fine dad: if no man will ever love me, I will make something of myself in the world.' Maybe I latched onto Sondheim's work because it affirmed what I saw as my only choice.
Sondheim wrote a song called "Children and Art," which basically says that those are the only choices worth choosing. But there was an undercurrent--you have to pick. I consciously chose "art" (whatever that means) for a long time because I didn't see how to make a relationship that would work for me, when I didn't even know if I was lovable.
In both the novels of the Brontes and of Jane Austen, the characters force themselves to avoid wallowing in angst or self pity. And sometimes, I wonder if they are right. Does having this blog, where I do an awful lot of navel gazing (but for the record, I do this in lieu of therapy, except when I'm working with the counselor my parents work with, and this seems to work better than therapy for me, because, honestly, I'm always honest here--but the rest of my life is not all-angst-all-the-time) make me better able to be out in the world? Or does it make me wallow? I never trust men who say "no baggage" because I can't really believe that anyone over 17 doesn't have baggage. But I do think we should pack lightly. When I travel (aside from Christmas), I never check a bag. (OK, there have been some exceptions--a month in Turkey involved 3 carpets on my trip home. I rarely check a bag). My bag is small enough that I can carry it myself and I never avoid doing something because of my luggage. Even when I went to Troy, in the summer, and it was over 100 degrees, I had a bag small enough that I could carry it with me and not go back to the city I left that morning. And I think this blog is the equivalent of those Eagle Creek packing cubes--I can travel light, with well organized luggage. But I don't really know if it works that way. Or if it is just more navel gazing.
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