I was asked to perform as the poet for Sunday Assembly (the well-known secular Sunday gathering), 4-Oct-20, the theme for which was “A Whole New World: Lessons We Learn from Musical Theatre”. Being me, I abruptly decided the day before that I was going to write a whole new piece. (I keep doing this; I may need to have a word with myself.)
Anyway, I asked people in various places what they learned from musicals, they came through in style, on Twitter, discord, and Facebook, and here is the result (video and text below, with my part starting around 20:00):
Once More
Or: What I learned from what people learned from musicals – a crowdsourced poem.
Meine Dammen und Herren!
Mesdames et Messieurs!
Ladies and Gentlemen!
Are you ready to learn what I’ve learned?
It’s a whole new world…
A strange journey…
And I see you tremble with antici…
…
…
…
pation. The creation of a musical microcosm
Of reality can be costly, but don’t worry –
I’ll be gentle. You ain’t never had a friend like me.
Ready?
“And I know things now,
“Many valuable things
“That I hadn’t known before!”
And a score of reminders of discoveries,
In theatres or bundled up on sofa’d sick days,
Uncovering the array of
Human experience,
Peeled down to what can be delivered
At half the pace of human speech
Over a couple of hours, with interval.
“You don’t have to sit around complaining
’bout the way your life has wound up…”
But you can turn it into song,
Invite the world to sing along,
And maybe, at the end, you’ll feel much better
Well, connected, anyway,
And you may walk away with the impression
That ethical standards can be predicted
By vocal pitch and the presence of syncopation,
But baby, real villains don’t come accompanied
With percussive warning labels.
“But the tigers come at night,
“With their voices soft as thunder,”
And I understand more about
Found family (“you’re a Jet all the way”)
And how selling your soul (and hair, and teeth)
For safety’s a shorter-term solution
Than you might believe.
And that if you don’t say (or sing)
What you mean soon, it can be too late.
(And what a great waste of plant food
An abusive dentist makes.)
I’ve learned that “525,600 minutes”
Is shorter than you’d think
(For all it’s been a long year),
But we can cheer the facts of Hamilton’s 51 essays,
The way everything ain’t free in America,
Prickly pears are best picked pawless,
Opium wars were fought for awful causes,
The poor should pick a pocket or two,
And how (in just seven days)
He’ll make a man out of you.
And “I’m glad we’ve got this new technology!”
For seeing each other with the world locked,
Instead of jockeying for toilet roll,
We can stay home to sing along,
Not forgetting that
“Tomorrow belongs to me!”
Because not everyone who summons good intent is
Bent on the same values as you and frankly?
Nazis are everywhere in musicals too,
A true reflection of what might beset us
If we forget whose money makes the world go around…
“You’ve got to be carefully taught”
Because the more fraught messages,
Can fling up defences, but picket fenced
And bathed in tunes from dapper gents
And sassy dames
They can ring, unregarded but working
Miracles under the skin,
Buried deep in synapses that are slowly forming
Brand new chains of meaning,
As catchy repetition literally changes your mind.
“Do you hear the people sing?”
Because the support of chorus
Is glorious, and we adore
Syncretic miracles weaving
Street sweepers and aristocracy
In high kicks and pretty harmonies.
But more than this, she tells me:
“It isn’t for the few to tell the many
What to do,” and we should choose
Which songs to sing, with whom.
“Consider yourself at home!”
Because no-one doesn’t have a place
In musicals. Can’t sing?
Here’s a comic role.
Can’t dance? Says who?!
But anyway, it’s overrated,
See, there’s oh so much you can do
Beyond the stage to make
The glitter linger longer
In people’s glee-starved souls.
“They had it coming!” apparently:
I’ve been handed horror stories of
All the incautious directors of musicals
Who neglect to check their props,
Stock up on body mic batteries
Flatter the pianist appropriately or
(Oh dear) let the band attend the bar
Beforehand. And oh, it’s messy,
But the show goes on.
And now it’s “Midnight!” (like, I literally wrote this line at midnight and couldn’t have been more delighted – yes, I need to get a life, or maybe just outside) and I need to find
An ending to this piece,
A triumphal closing chord
To call this to a halt,
And all while finding time to tell you
That it doesn’t matter that neither elephants
Nor jazz hands can make you fly,
But that life is also the song you sing in fits and starts:
Between the mundane, the joy;
Between the admin, the applause;
Between the tragedy, the soaring choruses;
And that some of these are the same things.
“It’s a hard-knock life!”
It’s true, and you could dismiss this as
Bread and circuses but for the subversive messages
Served up as hope, that “Singin’ in the rain”
Is sometimes the best way to make the most
Of things when times are tough
And that, if the chorus is large enough,
Its harmonies can overwhelm the best-laid plans
Of even the greatest single orchestrators.
“You choose.”
“What adventures we're going to have together!”
Meine Dammen und Herren!
Mesdames et Messieurs!
Ladies and Gentlemen!
Where are your troubles now?
Forgotten? I told you so…
We have no troubles here.
Here, life is beautiful.
Auf Wiedersehn!
A bientot!
Goodbye!
