My relationship with this song is a strange one. Decades ago, I used to watch Taxi, and I remembered an episode where Alex experiences an epiphany - has a near-death experience or something, and comes out the other side feeling superbly alive in every cell of his being. He sang a certain song - hell, I didn't even know what it was! But it recorded itself on my brain, stayed with me, until. . .
Then in the mid-'80s I was going through a Streisand phase, though I can barely stand her now, and the song seemed - it seemed - it seemed familiar, or did it? It may not have twigged at all that it was the same song Judd Hirsch sang on Taxi. It was later on, retroactively, that I made the connection. She sings the hell out of it, of course, but I've come to see her musical mannerisms as irritating. Still. The power of the lyric was undeniable. Stephen Sondheim, for Christ's sake - it can't misfire altogether.
Tons of years had to go by, again, until I stumbled (again!) on this Dean Jones version. Dean freakin' JONES? The Disney guy, the wholesome goofier-version-of-Dick-Van-Dyke type of guy? I couldn't even imagine him singing a Broadway song like this one, singing it with haunted, even frightened eyes as Stephen (fucking!) Sondheim stood over him . . and singing it with such conviction and passion that I no longer want to hear anyone else sing it.
Ever.
There has to be something good about the internet - there is, actually, but with a lot of scum on the top and sludge on the bottom. Rediscovering something like this, something buried, can be compelling, but it all started with Judd Hirsch on Taxi - and then I forgot all about it.
Interestingly enough - or, at least, I find it so - Stephen Sondheim wrote this musical, Company, with Anthony Perkins in mind. The two were close friends, perhaps lovers, and this song wraps around Perkins' sensibilities very well, both in the fairly limited vocal range and the spare and even laconic sentiments. Perkins ducked away, citing other commitments, but many thought the Bobby character (with its veiled homosexual references) cut too close. The Dean Jones video was filmed, I think, as part of a TV special to demonstrate how an original cast recording is made, though I don't know if it was ever aired.
The Greek chorus of friends in the song seems to be pushing the character out of a birth canal of fear and inhibition. I wonder if it really was that way with Perkins (and I confess I still have a "thing" for him), for he stated in an interview with People magazine that he never really felt close to another human being until he met his wife, Berry Berenson. And yet, and yet, there were both real and manufactured complications about his sexual orientation, as if that negated all the love and experiences they shared. And then there was the soul-shattering ending, Perkins dying far too young of AIDS, and Berry on one of the planes on 9-11. It has the dimensions of an epic love story ending in towering tragedy.
As I copied and pasted these lyrics, I decided to centre them, because I felt like something was going to arise from it, some shape. And it did. The verses are like chalices to me, maybe even communion cups, but in some cases more like trees. Some of them seem to leap upwards like dancers, others like dolphins. Not many poems will do this, take life and move, even beyond the words themselves.
So, this is the song Tony Perkins never sang, that was written for him, and about him.
Someone to hold you too close.
Someone to hurt you too deep.
Someone to sit in your chair,
To ruin your sleep,
(Dialogue)
Someone to need you too much.
Someone to know you too well.
Someone to pull you up short,
And put you through hell,
(Dialogue)
Someone you have to let in,
Someone whose feelings you spare,
Someone who, like it or not,
Will want you to share
A little, a lot.
(Dialogue)
Someone to crowd you with love.
Someone to force you to care.
Someone to make you come through,
Who'll always be there,
As frightened as you,
Of being alive,
Being alive.
Being alive.
Being alive!
(Dialogue)
Somebody hold me too close.
Somebody hurt me too deep.
Somebody sit in my chair,
And ruin my sleep,
And make me aware,
Of being alive.
Being alive.
Somebody need me too much.
Somebody know me too well.
Somebody pull me up short,
And put me through hell,
And give me support,
For being alive.
Make me alive.
Make me alive.
Make me confused.
Mock me with praise.
Let me be used.
Vary my days.
But alone,
Is alone,
Not alive.
Somebody crowd me with love.
Somebody force me to care.
Somebody let me come through,
I'll always be there,
As frightened as you,
To help us survive,
Being alive.
Being alive.
Being alive!
And this, from the Broadway musical Greenwillow. This song is not like any of the others, so minimal it barely exists, with a glorious setting like a rich autumn day. Somehow he glides along it and does not mess with it or damage it, but lets it be gloriously whole. And every time I hear it, I cry. Every time. I say, nah, not this time! I'm not going to cry this time. I just listened to it again, and my eyes are stinging and I sobbed again, and it was once more real, and alive.
This started off as a tack-on for my last post on Sunflower, but then I realized that, even for this blog, which trades in twists and turns and irrelevancies, it was just too irrelevant to be there. But I have to deal with it, somehow. This is something of an update on another tack-on from my Bob Dylan post, Darkness at the Break of Noon. Yes, my former friend is dead. He is not asleep; he is dead. At the end of the Dylan post, I wondered what exactly had happened to him: his longtime partner, someone I have never connected with (they were, strangely, both named Paul), emailed me to say he'd had a stroke and was "not expected to survive the weekend". It was a mass email that went out to a couple dozen people, none of whom I knew. Nothing came after that. I didn't feel comfortable answering the email, and I needed to know, so I had to do some detective work. I found out on the Facebook page for his former church (which he founded and made himself the head of) that he died on Easter Sunday.
Is he in the Afterlife, whatever that is? I feel him batting around me like a fly. It's a nuisance, is what it is. Not a good energy, if it IS him. Black magic - was there some black magic going on here? Nonsense, I know nothing about it, even though I took his class in traditional/aboriginal medicine many moons ago. That's how I learned about curses, poisoned darts, boiled toads and datura. So it's interesting that if - a big if - an impossible if - IF there were any black magic going on at all here, the source of it would actually be him. What happened for me was anything but magic. His was a particularly fine-edged abuse: take an interest at first, be kind, be helpful, be supportive even, and then, for reasons impossible to ascertain, or for no reason at all - chwwwwwwt! (The sound of a guillotine blade making a lizardy little breeze). I only know that, having set himself up as an expert on certain things I was interested in, he said some hateful, hurtful, condescending, even contemptuous things about me and my beliefs.
Yet everyone thought he was the most wonderful, big-hearted, kind - but here, I am not sure. He left that church at some point - "retired", but if I knew the man at all - knew the hole in the centre of his sureness - I think he left because he lost control of the whole thing. No one was falling in line any more. He had ceased to be the Little Prince, holding sway over his own little spiritualist fiefdom. It was a long time ago I met him, I was a different person then, and I would never let anyone like that into my life now. I had enough of it growing up in my family of origin, thank you very much. (But then again: most of THEM are dead now, too. Funny how, in a strange sort of way, death solves everything.)
But it's unpleasant, the way things come back to me, disparaging things I put up with: having my own spiritualist experiences, which I was testing out because I wasn't sure what to make of them, dismissed as "oh I don't know, it's probably just some kind of fantasy", said in a bored sort of voice. Whereas he would go on, and on, and on about his own experiences, with the assumption that all of them were bona fide. Did anyone even need to question it? The Gershwin thing hurt and angered me. I am the first to say it may well be 100% imagination, but my exploration at first seemed to be greeted with enthusiasm and even fascination. I started sending him things. I don't know when, exactly, the turning point came, but it's hard to hear that nasty little metallic "chwwwwwwt!" before you've even had breakfast.
No, this doesn't sound authentic at all. No, I could check with some of my friends who know something about this, but I know what they'd all say. Don't forget, Margaret, that you don't really have a grounding in this tradition and that I trained myself for many, many decades to blah blah blah. I don't see anything here that blah blah blah blah blah. He did not have to say, "Oh yes, write a book about it, why don't you." But the sudden trap door opening under my feet reminded me of another vicious sadist, a man whom I later found out was virtually sociopathic in his cruelty to others. I actually found it out from a psychiatrist who had "inside knowledge" that I did not doubt. Later I found some blog posts from people who turned themselves inside-out apologizing for him because he was dead, but then went on to compare him to Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with his lethal trap door. A direct quote from a dear friend of his (name changed to protect the innocent, namely me): My good friend writer R. D. died last week. This is not an obituary. Nor is it a paean to him. He would have hated that. R. was not a perfect person. He was funny and kind but he frequently isolated himself and he cut off some friends like Sweeney Todd dispatching a client.
He was also deeply private. As he lay dying of a stroke at age 67, colleagues were arguing about the particulars of his life. Did he have one brother or two? Had his father been a school teacher or farmer? Did R. really play the cello and, if not, how did this small town Prairie boy develop such a profound knowledge of music?
I hope that, when my time comes, work colleagues don't stand around my deathbed trying to piece together my life, trying to determine if I had anyone in my life at all (which these rather chilling words imply). Obviously they were attempting to scrape up particulars for his obituary, having no one else to ask. I think this goes beyond being "deeply private". I wondered at first if someone had found him weeks later, as sometimes, sadly, happens with people who "frequently isolate themselves". I also hope there are no comparisons in my obituary to Sweeney Todd, who slit people's throats in his barber chair, slid them down a trap door, had them ground up into meat and made them into pies that people then purchased and ate. (Sidebar: in the usual published tribute, someone at the Sun strongly implied he had been wasted in the backwater of Canada and should have been writing for somebody important, like the New Yorker. I'm trying to figure out who this says the most about: R. D., the commentator, the Vancouver Sun or the New Yorker.)
And a curious thought: both men died of sudden strokes. I don't want to go too far down the road of what that might mean symbolically. Neither of them were old: seventy-ish, if that. In fact, R. D. was maybe 67. First there is a person, then there is no person, then. . . The last email I ever got from Paul I deleted unread. I already knew what was in it. I just pushed the whole thing away from me. Part of me wanted some kind of revenge - I admit it now! And yes, I admit that at that particular point, I had my mojo working. What does that mean, exactly? What that means, and all it means, is that one holds up a mirror. One holds up a mirror, and whatever bad vibes that person is emanating, they bounce right back at them and hit them in the face. You don't have to do anything, not anything at all. That's the way it works. That's why I opened this post with Celie's famous statement from The Color Purple. It's the scene in which she gets her power back. I got mine back a very long time ago, but it is nasty to be reminded that someone, anyone, can toy with it and do damage the way Paul did.
I can't sit here and say I'm glad he's dead, because surely he did have people who cared about him, and I wouldn't insult them. But I am glad that the nastiness in him, unacknowledged by anyone around him, is dead. I am glad his pomposity and intellectual bullying and constantly pulling rank on people to make himself feel better is dead. I am glad that peculiar form of sinking dismay will never happen to me again. I know I have learned from him, but not even remotely what he thought I would/"should" learn. From him I learned I can step around narcissists who seem to believe they have special knowledge, wield special power, and are thus innately entitled to tell you that your own beliefs are ill-informed and of no value. From him, I learned what to avoid - what to ignore - and how to keep on walking.
But meanwhile. . . LET'S SING!
Seems a downright shame
Shame?
Seems an awful waste
Such a nice, plump frame
Wot's his name has
Had
Has
Nor it can't be traced!
Business needs a lift
Debts to be erased
Think of it as thrift as a gift
If you get my drift, no?
Seems an awful waste
I mean, with the price of meat
What it is? When you get it
If you get it
Hah
Good, you got it
Take for instance, Mrs. Mooney and her pie shop
Business never better using only pussycats and toast
And a pussy's good for maybe six or seven at the most
And I'm sure they can't compare as far as taste
Mrs. Lovett, what a charming notion
Well, it does seem a waste
Eminently practical
And yet appropriate as always, it's an idea
Mrs. Lovett, how I've lived
Without you all these years, I'll never know
How delectable, also undetectable
Think about it
Lots of other gentlemen'll
Soon be comin' for a shave
Won't they?
Think of all them pies
How choice
How rare
For what's the sound of the world out there?
What, Mr. Todd?
What, Mr. Todd?
What is that sound?
Those crunching noises pervading the air
Yes, Mr. Todd, yes, Mr. Todd
Yes, all around
It's man devouring man, my dear
And then who are we to deny it in here?
These are desperate times
Mrs. Lovett and desperate measures are called for
Here we are, now, hot out of the oven
What is that?
It's priest, have a little priest
Is it really good? Sir, it's too good, at least
Then again, they don't commit sins of the flesh
So it's pretty fresh
Awful lot of fat only where it sat
Haven't you got poet, or something like that?
No, y'see, the trouble with poet is
'Ow do you know it's deceased? Try the priest
Heavenly
Not as hearty as bishop, perhaps
But then again
Not as bland as curate, either
And good for business too
Always leaves you wantin' more
Trouble is
We only get it on Sundays
Lawyer's rather nice
If it's for a price
Order something else, though to follow
Since no one should swallow it twice
Anything that's lean
Well then, if you're British and loyal
You might enjoy Royal Marine
Anyway, it's clean
Though of course it tastes of wherever it's been
Is that squire on the fire?
Mercy, no sir, look closer
You'll notice it's grocer
Looks thicker, more like vicar
No, it has to be grocer, it's green
The history of the world, my love
Save a lot of graves
Do a lot of relatives favors
Is those below serving those up above
Everybody shaves
So there should be plenty of flavors
How gratifying for once to know
That those above will serve those down below
Now let's see, here we've got tinker
Something pinker
Tailor? Paler, Butler? Subtler
Potter? Hotter, Locksmith?
Lovely bit of clerk
Maybe for a lark
Then again there's sweep
If you want it cheap
And you like it dark
Try the financier, peak of his career
That looks pretty rank
Well, he drank, it's a bank
Cashier, never really sold
Maybe it was old
Have you any Beadle?
Next week, so I'm told
Beadle isn't bad till you smell it and
Notice 'ow, well, it's been greased
Stick to priest
Now then, this might be a little bit stringy
But then of course it's fiddle player
No, this isn't fiddle player, it's piccolo player
'Ow can you tell? It's piping hot then blow on it first
The history of the world, my sweet
Oh, Mr. Todd, ooh, Mr. Todd
What does it tell?
Is who gets eaten, and who gets to eat
And, Mr. Todd, too, Mr. Todd
Who gets to sell
But fortunately, it's also clear
That, but everybody goes down well with beer
Since marine doesn't appeal to you
'Ow about rear admiral?
Too salty, I prefer general
With or without his privates? 'With' is extra
What is that? It's fop
Finest in the shop
And we have some shepherd's pie peppered
With actual shepherd on top
And I've just begun
Here's the politician, so oily
It's served with a doily
Have one, put it on a bun
Well, you never know if it's going to run
Try the friar
Fried, it's drier
No, the clergy is really
Too coarse and too mealy
Then actor, that's compacter
Yes, and always arrives overdone
I'll come again
When you have judge on the menu
Wait, true, we don't have judge yet
But we've got something you might fancy even better
I've been on a bit of a Stephen Sondheim kick lately, maybe because of his longtime connection with Anthony Perkins, one of my perennial preoccupations/happy obsessions. These two were similar in that they were both intricate, impossible, brilliant, and (in spite of their vast creative contribution) essentially unknowable.
Though Perkins was prematurely snatched at 60, Sondheim is still with us at 80-some. One of his many legendary shows was Company (1970), in which T. P. almost played Bobby, the still point at the centre of a comedy of couples. When it comes to relationships and love, Bobby won't commit, but committed people (or people who should be committed) swirl all around him.
Somehow Tony Perkins wasn't available. Another commitment, you see. Or he didn't really need to "play" Bobby; he was too busy being him.
I tried to find a really good version of an incredible song, Being Alive, Bobby's final soliloquy/aria/heartsong. I went through Bernadette Peters, whom I've always loved; Patty LuPone; Barbra Streisand; even Julie Andrews. Nada, naynay, nonenonenone, can't get into it and am almost at the point of giving up.
Then I stumbled on. . . this.
It's Dean Jones, yes, that Dean Jones from the Love Bug series and innumerable other Disney flicks. I didn't even know he could sing. It's a recording session, probably the original cast recording judging by the fact that Sondheim looks like a middle-aged juvenile delinquent. But what Jones does here is beyond singing. He opens his mouth, his eyes soft with a frightened vulnerability, and releases this hymn, this almost unbearable paean to the aching neccessity of love.
Jesus! He can't just sing: he can fly. Where has he been all my life? I don't know if I've ever heard a song turned inside-out like this. Along with flat-out artistry, he possesses a soaring technical brilliance, the ability to sustain a phrase in a clean, steady arc for an impossibly long time. He builds and builds the drama as the orchestra crescendos and begins to thunder at the end. . .and when it's over and he stands there with a tense, "was that any good?" look clearly visible on his face, there's an eerie silence in the studio. Sondheim mumbles something about it being adequate. Then, almost like at the end of Laugh-in, sparse applause, the sound of a few hands clapping.
When I hear something this good, which is never, I want to do something really extreme, like throw all my manuscripts on a bonfire, committ suttee or whatever it is (but my husband would have to do it first, damn it). When I hear something this exalted, I want to just chuck my ambitions and go take a long walk in the park (ten years ought to do it). But at the same time, it goads me to be better than I know how to be. This song is about someone who can't fully live until he learns to open himself wide to the splendors and catastrophes of love. I wonder why I have such a visceral response to it. Love is at the centre of my life, and in fact, I know it is my central purpose. Of this I have no doubt. But what does it mean, what does it really mean to love? Do we ever get it right?
There's a story behind this song. I posted the lyrics yesterday because I think they're stunning: Stephen Sondheim mixes cliches with simple yet startlingly original images ("and ice like vinyl on the streets, cold as silver, white as sheets/Rain like strings, and changing things/Like leaves.")
This wasn't written for one of his legendary musicals, but for a quirky little TV special from the mid-'60s called Evening Primrose. A disillusioned poet (played by that disillusioned poet of Hollywood, Anthony Perkins) breaks into a department store at night, hoping to find shelter from a cruel and uncaring world, and encounters a whole subculture living there (kind of a prequel to that cheesy '80s fantasy/drama Beauty and the Beast, which I used to slavishly watch every Friday night while putting away copious quantities of fizzy peach cider).
Anyway, since no one taped things in those days (it was deemed too expensive, which is why the networks erased most of Ernie Kovacs' programs and taped quiz shows over them), this 50-minute musical was long lost except to memory. But sometimes a kinescope (a crude sort of tape taken from the TV monitor) remained, and not long ago someone unearthed a "pristine" copy from a vault somewhere and reissued it on DVD. It's on its way to me from Amazon, and I'll be reviewing it in agonizing detail when it comes.
The reason I'll bother is that the song I Remember, now a classic, was written for this show. Unfortunately, Charmion Carr, fresh from her triumph as the eldest Von Trapp daughter in The Sound of Music, played the inevitable romantic interest, just so Tony Perkins could have his usual awkward, ambivalent love scenes with her.
Unfortunately, and in spite of TSOM, Carr couldn't sing. So she basically massacred this lovely, haunting song, this song which makes me cry every time even though I always swear I won't. When I hear it, it makes me wish Anthony Perkins had sung it: with his sweet lyric tenor and great care with lyrics, he would have given it its due. (And I think he knew what it was all about.)
Since recording artist were quick to issue covers for this gem (kind of like that hymn to dysfunctional relationships, Send in the Clowns), I encountered a few different versions on YouTube, but I remembered one from a CD called Cleo Sings Sondheim that never failed to stir me.
This video has its limitations. Every Cleo Laine video I've seen has silly special effects, and this one is no exception. Losing my Mind has the following choreography:
"The sun comes up, I think about you." (Cue the sun streaming in the window.) "The coffee cup, I think about you." (Cleo sips from a Starbuck's cup.) And so on, and so on (giving little "gee, what shall I do" headshakes that almost destroy the song's indescribable yearning). All that's missing is the Swiffer duster to illustrate "all afternoon, doing every little chore".
I Remember is almost as inane. When the lyrics mention snow, little bits of styrofoam begin to sift down on her. When it's "leaves", pieces of paper blow into a doorway. It's just too sad.
But the performance: no one else captures the delicacy and pathos of this song, especially those last lines, "I remember days, or at least I try. But as years go by, they're a sort of haze/And the bluest ink isn't really sky. And at times I think/I would gladly die/for a day of sky."
I remember sky -- It was blue as ink. Or at least I think I remember sky I remember snow -- Soft as feathers Sharp as thumbtacks Coming down like lint And it made you squint When the wind would blow And ice, like vinyl on the streets, Cold as silver, white as sheets, Rain like strings And changing things Like leaves. I remember leaves -- Green as spearmint, crisp as paper I remember trees -- Bare as coat racks Spread like broken umbrellas. And parks and bridges, ponds and zoos, Ruddy faces, muddy shoes. Light and noise And bees and boys And days. I remember days -- Or at least, I try. But as years go by They're a sort of haze. And the bluest ink Isn't really sky. And at times, I think I would gladly die For a day Of sky.
