All things considered I guess you don't have to buy it

I only recently learned that the Borders stores had shut down. I've never been inside one--I think I might have been inside a B&N while I was in the states but never a Borders--and I'm a little sad, not that it affects my life in any way but because future generations of off-Broadway fans will likely not understand the following words in "A Summer in Ohio":

I saw your book at a Borders in Kentucky
Under a sign that said "New and Recommended!"
I stole a look at your picture on the inside sleeve
And then I couldn't leave!

Art, imitating life

I used to have this HUGE thing for Jason Robert Brown's music, and today I was searching my iPod for songs to listen to while traveling to community, and I thought of him. I googled him again and found this strangely appropriate paragraph, which is apparently how he rephrased something that Stephen Sondheim said to him:

Nobody cares what you think. Once a creation has been put into the world, you have only one responsibility to its creator: Be supportive. Support is not about showing how clever you are, how observant of some flaw, how incisive in your criticism. There are other people whose job it is to guide the creation, to make it work, to make it live; either they did their job or they didn't. But that is not your problem. If you come to my show and you see me afterwords, say only this: "I loved it". It doesn't matter if that's what you really felt. What I need at that moment is to know that you care enough about me and the work I do to tell me that you loved it, not "in spite of its flaws", not "even though everyone else seems to have a problem with it", but simply, plainly, "I loved it." If you can't say that, don't come backstage, don't find me in the lobby, don't lean over the pit to see me. Just go home, and either write me a nice email or don't. Say all the catty, bitchy things you want to your friend, your neighbor, the Internet. Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe someday down the line, I'll be ready to hear what you have to say, but at that moment, that face-to-face moment after I have unveiled some part of my soul, however small, to you:that is the most vulnerable moment in any artist's life. I beg you, plead with you to tell me what you really thought, what you actually, honestly, totally believed, then you must tell me "I loved it." That moment must be respected."

And the thing is, that really surprised me. I've always thought of Sondheim as a really tough guy, who just puts his art out there regardless of what people think of it. (And through the years, despite his genius, there have been some pretty mixed responses.) But I think that was wrong of me, and that I missed something that is so integral to his work: that it is all so intensely personal. (And I think I missed a huge chunk of what "Sunday in the Park with George" was all about! Now, despite myself, I think I understand it better.) Whether it's good art or bad art, or good musical theatre or bad musical theatre, whenever I pop a CD of his into a player (or a CD of Jason Robert Brown's, for that matter), I am actually listening to pieces of a man's soul, put to music. Interspersed, too, with the art and soul (haha.) of the people who sang his songs, the musicians who played the notes.

I know that my little story--my 13,999 word story that took so long to write but still ended up underdeveloped and a little awful--is nothing to Sondheim's immortal work, and that ten years from now the fifty people or so who have read it will probably have forgotten all about it, but it is still a part of my soul, and I hope that when it's revealed people will be... nice to me. Nice enough. Nice enough to tell me, "I loved it."

Merrily rolling along

Because some days it's easier, and some days it isn't. Not that I'm not happy! I am an adult now, but sometimes I feel like that scared teenager with the uncertain fashion sense and the curious desire for approval. I am no longer prone to wild swings on the pendulum of emotion, and I don't think I can feel things so deeply now as I was able to back then, when every day it was a challenge even to put clothes on and go to school and to smile and to eat.

It's just, it's one of those days when it feels like I want to crawl out of myself, as if my own skin were too tight to fit all of me. (Like, you know, my clothes.) I wish there were an Obliviate for real life so you could take away the most terrible parts, the worst parts, so you could never go back to them and feel that before they happened, how much smoother and smaller was your heart.
------------------------------------------

Not a day goes by,
Not a single day.

But you're somewhere a part of my life,
And it looks like you'll stay.

As the days go by,
I keep thinking, "When does it end?
Where's the day I'll have started forgetting?"

But I just go on
Thinking and sweating
And cursing and crying
And turning and reaching
And waking,
And dying.

And no,
Not a day goes by,
Not a blessed day.

But you're still somehow part of my life
And you won't go away.

And I have to say,
If you did, I'd die.
I'll die day after day
After day after day,
After day after day,
After day.

Till the days go by,
Till the days go by,
Till the days go by.