The Word Sanctuary: November 2017

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Sondheim's Religious Vision

The man who wrote "thieves get rich / saints get shot / God don't answer prayers a lot" can be trusted when he says that religious rites and beliefs have played no part in his life.

But when a 2002 letter published in The New York Times claimed that musical theatre has been "robbed of joy" by Stephen Sondheim, and when even admiring bloggers call his work "amoral" and "cynical," my theological training kicks in to answer the charges. Actually, Sondheim's work is consistently "religious" in the sense that religion shares with ligament: It's about what ties us to our world -- how "no one is alone." A theological look at Sondheim's works might help future directors appeal to audiences put off by his reputed "dark vision."

Joy

Before we look for Sondheim’s version of sin or redemption, we can bury that canard about his killing joy. His intention, at least, is to evoke it. “Joy” was his own word when he met with teens (including me) at Broadway’s Music Box Theater in June 1977.

Asked about Pacific Overtures, which some critics called “arid” and “cold,” Sondheim said, “I would like to think [audiences] would feel a kind of joy” seeing the imagination and skill in the way the story was told, whether or not they warmed to the subject. His admirers are familiar with that kind of joy: “We revel in the glories that his works endlessly yield,” writes composer Jason Robert Brown. “This is the true gospel: this thing we do, this art we propose to create, can aspire to a greater perfection, a truer and richer transcendence” (“Worshiping in the Church of Steve,” Kennedy Center, 2002). (See my blogpost on the joy of Pacific Overtures).

Redemption

But Sondheim has indeed robbed the musical of the happy ending, giving us instead something more affecting and real, a new start. Theologians would call that redemption. The most prominent example is Into the Woods, when the false promise of happiness in Act I, “Ever After,” is followed by life-and-death struggles in Act. II. The end of the play is just the beginning for a reconstituted family, and Sondheim sends the audience out of the theatre with a caution and a hope: “Into the woods / You go again, / You have to every now and then,” but “everything you learn there / Will help when you return there.”

The Frogs shows faith that theatre can effect a change of heart and perhaps a change of life, when the company instructs the audience to save their community: “Citizens of Athens / If you’re smart, / Don’t sit around while Athens / Falls apart,” concluding, “And now – We start.”

Merrily We Roll Along seems to lack redemption, retracing a life to the point where Franklin Shepherd’s friendships start their doomed trajectory. But as we see young friends on a roof marveling at Sputnik and looking forward to “so much stuff to sing” in “Our Time,” the joyfulness in Sondheim’s music makes it possible to feel that there’s a chance to start over and get it right this time – if not for Franklin Shepard, then for us. (Read my blogpost on Merrily "Rhymes with Integrity").

Other Sondheim finales promise renewal instead of final reward. Anyone Can Whistle ends “With So Little to Be Sure Of,” sung by a pair ready to begin new lives, apart. Sunday in the Park with George builds to a song about taking risks (“Move On”) and finishes with the words, “A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities.” The bachelor Robert of Company doesn’t show up for his birthday party in the final scene, leaving his friends to conclude that he has left the “warm” and “cozy” life of “Side by Side by Side” to seek a committed relationship, because he has learned that "alone is... not alive." Follies ends with couples shaken, but shorn of illusions; A Little Night Music concludes with several relationships rearranged and renewed; and Bounce [since revised to be Road Show] ends with the brothers ambling off into eternity, saying, “Sooner or later, we’re bound to get it right.” (They’re in a hokey Heaven, but this and other posthumous appearances in Sondheim’s works are for framing the play, not an endorsement of the doctrine of life after death.)

Judgment

Before redemption is possible, there must be what theologians call judgment, when people recognize they’re on the wrong path. Follies is explicitly about “The Road You Didn’t Take.” Using ghosts of the past and pastiche songs of youthful optimism, Sondheim and his collaborators confront characters with the disparity between cherished illusions and reality. Merrily takes a microscopic look into Franklin Shepard’s moment of judgement, a violent dissolution of his personal life at the pinnacle of his professional success. The show looks backward from that moment for an answer to the question, “How did you get so far off the track?” Along the way Charley and Mary “nudge” him back to the right path, and Mary tells Franklin after a deep crisis, “Now you know… It’s called letting go your illusions / And don’t confuse them with dreams.” But he doesn’t get it.

Some of the most powerful numbers in Sondheim’s scores dramatize this moment of recognition in a character’s life. In “Rose’s Turn” (Gypsy), “Live, Laugh, Love” (Follies), and “Send in the Clowns” (Night Music), characters passing middle age realize that while they’ve been filling “scrapbooks,” laying out their lives “like lines on a graph,” or “tearing around … opening doors,” they have missed their chances to love and be loved. In two powerful Sondheim songs, “Too Many Mornings” (Follies) and “Lesson #8” (Sunday) the singers imagine their lives “wasted,” “Leaving no mark,” “merely” (or “just”) passing through. Sondheim’s Assassins sing how they “have a right to expect” that they’re going to “connect, connect, connect,” and lash out because they learn “it’s never gonna happen.”

Sin, a Failure of Vision

How do characters get into such a fix? Theologians’ answer to that is sin, which in Sondheim’s work seems to be a failure of vision. Focused on an illusory and selfish goal, the character fails to see the individual worth of any other person. Near the end of Into the Woods, the Baker concludes that our moral responsibility is to enter into others’ perspectives, to “honor” (by understanding) the “terrible mistakes” of others – fathers, mothers, giants, witches – remembering always that “holding to their own, thinking they’re alone” is going to do great damage.

Sondheim depicts characters so focused on attaining “class” (Gene in Saturday Night), “success” (Ben in Follies), or “the glamorous life” (Desiree in Night Music), and becoming “rich and happy” (Franklin in Merrily) that they fail to see how they neglect and hurt the people who would love them. The Witch thinks she can preserve what she calls “Our Little World” (Into the Woods) by locking Rapunzel in a tower. Similarly, Rose (Gypsy) tries to keep her “babies” from growing up for the sake of her own “dream.” Focused on revenge, Sweeney Todd blurs everyone together as either “wicked” or deserving euthanasia (“Epiphany”), and he doesn’t recognize his own family.

Creation: Life is Good

Contrast Sondheim’s monsters Sweeney and Rose with a pair of saints who “belong together,”George and Dot (Sunday in the Park). Each is concerned with making a mark, not “passing through / Just like the people out strolling on Sunday.” Dot makes her connection to posterity through relationships. George, far from having “No Life,” enters vicariously into the lives of the individuals he sketches, singing their songs with them to make art that lives “forever.” The song “Children and Art” underscores how their approaches to life are complementary: As their story naturally deals with vision, connection, and mortality, this collaboration between Sondheim and James Lapine is the most complete statement of Sondheim’s overview of what theologians call creation, the nature of life itself.

In a word, creation is beautiful. “Pretty is what changes,” George explains to his mother, who laments the disappearance of pretty views. “What the eye arranges / Is what is beautiful.” Not only “all trees, all towers” are worthy of close attention for George, but also the individuals – from high-society women down to the cranky garbage man and his dog. George’s mother, suddenly aware that her own life is slipping away moment by moment, urges him, “Quick! Draw it all!” (See my reflection "Sunday, Art, and Forever")

After this song about mortality and eternity comes the anthem “Sunday.” George “revises the world,” posing the characters. When he tenderly takes Dot’s hand to put finishing touches on her portrait, he softly hums, confirming how this painting is his expression of love for her. From that quiet passage, the chorus builds to the word “forever.” Sondheim’s anthem, interweaving all the strands of the play – its story, themes (vision, eternity, connection), design, musical motifs – is made more poignant in a live performance by the knowledge that this perfect consummation is passing even as we watch. No wonder audiences often weep for “Sunday”!

Sondheim Practices What He Preaches

As George does, as the Baker advises, Sondheim takes extraordinary care to honor the individual perspectives of characters, even minor ones, with the kind of richly layered polyphony that is his specialty (“Company,” “Four Black Dragons,” “Pretty Lady,” “Something Just Broke”). His favorite song, “Someone in a Tree,” celebrates diversity of perspective. He finds interest even in assassins, con men, a stalker (Fosca in Passion), a rapacious judge and a demon barber. We don’t have to forgive them, but through imagination and eloquence, we understand them

Sondheim’s own career exemplifies another moral imperative that even some of his bad guys get right: Don’t settle for “living life in the living room” (Gypsy). “Fall if you have to, but … make a noise” (Whistle). “A person should celebrate everything passing by” (Night Music). “Burn your bridges, start again / Or you’ll never grow” (Merrily). “Stop worrying where you’re going, move on” (Sunday in the Park). “Without a risk, the world seems pretty tame” (Bounce / Road Show).

And, in the words of the only full-fledged god to speak in Sondheim’s work (Pluto in The Frogs): “When you’re not afraid to die, / Then you’re not afraid to live.”

(For many, many more articles of related interest, see my Sondheim page.)

After Sondheim's death in 2021, Central Synagogue in New York did a solemn, beautiful tribute with thoughtful words and a medley of Sondheim songs to fit the context of a religious service. Synagogue Tribute.

(This essay was printed as "So Many Possibilities: A Look at Sondheim's Religious Vision" in the Sondheim Review, Winter 2006, pp. 21-22. Since I wrote it, and the journal is defunct, I suppose that I don’t break any copyright laws by posting it here -- or, if I do, that no one will care.)

Saturday, November 11, 2017

A Year into Assisted Living: Holding Steady

When I think back a year, I'm struck by a lot that's changed. We've reached a plateau in a good place. Here's a rundown:

Mom's okay with her small apartment, and doesn't remember that it was ever bigger.
Mom takes a mood stabilizer that works, until late afternoon, when well-documented "sundown syndrome" results in anxiety, depression, boredom, anger after dinner.
Home care professionals Laura and Dee now visit her two-to-four hours every afternoon and come back after dinner every night.
The facility's staff administer medicines every day, though Mom doesn't recall anything about it. They tell her that these are "vitamins" to keep her beautiful. I used to re-stock the pill dispenser Saturdays, only to discover that she had skipped days, or had taken pills directly from the bottles, or (one time, for sure) had taken the dog's medicine, too.
Mom is drinking 1/2 the wine she used to drink, or less; the 6 oz. bottles are 50% water, now, thanks to sneaky refilling of the bottles by me and the home care ladies. There's no more drinking a bottle, throwing it away, and saying, "Ok, it's time for a glass of wine;" no more of her getting in the car after a couple bottles to re-stock; no more late-evening walks across a five-lane intersection to the corner drug store for more.
Mom usually forgets that she ever had a car. When she thinks to ask about it, I remind her that she gave up her keys voluntarily after locking Sassy in a hot car, and remind her of times she got upset or distracted while driving. (We donated proceeds from the car sale to the Humane Society where Mom first met her dog Sassy.)
Sassy the dog remains healthy and happy, entertaining Mom all day.
Mom's Long Term Care Insurance is now reimbursing her living trust for both the assisted living and the home care visits, amounting to $10K a month.
I have Mom's credit card, because she loses it a lot; I give her a limited number of checks, which she uses for hair and nail appointments, for yogurt, chopped chicken, and fruit for snacks.
Those urgent notes on the mirror, piles in each room of "urgent" and "official" requests for money from political charlatans, and the obscure notations over notations on each of three calendars are things of the past; Mom has forgotten that she has a mailbox, so I throw out all the junk mail, pay the bills, and give her just the catalogues.
She doesn't remember what she reads in her morning newspaper or anything from TV news (on incessantly), so she's flabbergasted every time she learns who's President.

That's where we are. I obsessively check my voice mail for Mom's angry / anxious messages, and rarely find one any more. I never knew when I knocked on her door whether she'd be happy to see me, or bitter about my leaving her "in a prison." Since at least June, it's been Happy Mom every time.
[Photo: I dropped in early one week morning in the summer, and she was up, made up, and ready for another day.]

I'd say things are holding steady.

See other entries in my "Dementia Diary."

Tuesday, November 07, 2017

Highlights from "Forward Day by Day" Oct. 2017

October's issue of the daily devotion booklet Forward Day by Day offered meditations on the October lectionary by Eileen O'Brien of the Houston Canterbury ministry associated with the University of Houston. She highlights bits of scripture that I'd not noticed before.

Tuesday, Oct. 10: Assigned to write on 1 Corinthians 11.2, 17-22, O'Brien plays on the familiar London warning to "mind the gap," asking what we miss when the lectionary leaves out verses 3-16, which have been used "to silence female voices," and used in turn by others "to silence the voice of scripture itself." She concludes, "Sometimes taking scripture seriously means not agreeing to everything Paul says but rather taking up his invitation to 'discern for yourselves' (1 Cor 11.13)."

Sunday, Oct. 22: The story of "giving unto Caesar" reminds O'Brien of theologian Stanley Hauerwas's calling "security" and "personal freedom" the "great idols of middle-class America." They sound good, surely, but, she writes,

Security cannot be the most desired good of a people who proclaim a crucified God, who came vulnerably into an unsafe world to live as we live and to die as we die. Unfettered personal freedom cannot be the most desired good of a people who follow the one who 'came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many' (Mark 10:45). How then shall the Christian relate to a government that claims to prioritize and provide these things?

Thursday, Oct. 26, responding to Ezra 1:2-3, O'Brien observes that some of the Hebrew exiles chose to stay in Babylon. She asks us about "powers" that hold us "captive."

The next day, the story in Ezra3:12-13 concerns elders among the exiles returned to Jerusalem, the sound of their weeping mixed with the celebration of the construction of the new temple's foundations. "Sometimes it is not until we see the new foundation that we fully realize that is is not the old. There is something irretrievable about the past that must be grieved." She tells us to "[honor] grief alongside joyful shouts as expressions of thankfulness for what had been and amidst gratitude for this new beginning."

She calls Revelation "the crazy uncle of the New Testament family," but sees that "the text defiantly calls out" to the powers of the world, "You are big and bad and scary, but we see through you!"