Dichroic Reflections

Broadway wisdom

On my way to work, I've been listening to the musical 1776 (the version where Brent Spiner brilliantly plays John Adams) and to Mandy Patinkin's Mamaloshen. For a Jewish girl from Philadelphia, this combination should count as roots music.

I don't think I listen to musicals for the same reason most people do -- that is, those people who do listen to them, and who admit to it. I can do irony when required (and sarcasm at any opportunity, and can sometimes appreciate camp and kitsch, but I think my natural mode of appreciation is fairly uncritical (to a point - I have put down books for being too badly written) and even a little sentimental. This would explain why I enjoyed Miss Clare Remembers, re eample, though it was panned by the Mrissa.

I can like musicals that do kitsch well (Rocky Horror) and be at least mildly entertained by those that contain nothing but entertainment and a decent song or two (the latter condition is why I enjoyed My One and Only far more than The Boyfriend or The Pajama Game). The ones that I keep coming back to, though, are the ones with something real riding on the music. South Pacific, where love can't grow until prejudice is rooted out. Oklahoma!, with the hopes of building a country. Fiddler on the Roof, which I suspect is not a far cry from my ancestors' lives. (Minus some but not all of the singing.) Even Godspell, whose message really isn't for me.

And 1776. Maybe because it's about men gathering together to do a job, the first thing it makes me think about is work-related; it reminds me that when you're trying to make a big change, it takes a while, and a lot of work. That even the biggest and most seemingly inevitable enterprises can be touch-and-go at their inception. And that if you agree there's a problem, even when you don't agree on the exact dimensions of the problem, you can still find a solution that will work for a while, at least -- buying you time to fix it later. And on the converse, it reminds me that if your initial fix has major problems, the latter correction can work but still be immensely painful.

(I can't read about the Revolution or the Federalist debates without being reminded of how they ended us up in a Civil War a hundred years after. But that still doesn't mean the Revolution wasn't the right choice and at that time and in that place, it could only be done by agreeing to ignore the elephant in the room, slavery, for a time.)

Another thing it reminds me of is my ideal of marriage. John and Abigail Adams' was one of the great ones, though it was tested by long separations, wrong-headed decisions, and failures and death of some of their offspring. LA posted something the other day that struck me because her definition is so far off for me:

Because you know what? I am a VERY GOOD WIFE. I do not nag. I do not overspend. I do not ever serve a meal he’s not crazy about. He gets laid or blown every day. I am coping with a serious dent in my mobility with as much grace as I can manage. He never hears me complain nor do I dun him with household chores when I’m having a rough time. He keeps exactly the hours he wants to keep and we all follow his schedule. I am starting the steepest descent into menopause and since that spin-out a few months ago the Hobbit House has been free of tirades and tears. My tongue is lumpy from biting it so often.

It may be right for LA, of course - that's up to her. Me, though, I'm not especially good about most of those things, and in most of them I don't particularly care if I am. In 1776, though, there's a short dialogue between Abigail and John. It's probably accurate -- most of the Adams' songs in the musicals are based on their own letters:

Adams
Oh, Abigail, what am I going to do?

Abigail
Do, John?

Adams
You must tell me what it is! I've always been dissatisfied, I know that; but lately, I find that I reek of discontentment! It fills my throat and floods my brain and, sometimes--sometimes I fear there is no longer a dream, but only the discontentment.

Abigail
Oh, John, can you really know so little about yourself? And can you think so little of me that you'd believe I married the man you've described? Have you forgotten what you used to say to me? I haven't. "Commitment, Abby--commitment! There are only two creatures of value on the face of this earth: those with a commitment and those who require the commitment of others." Do you remember, John?

Adams
I remember.

That sums up for me my concept of what a "good wife" does: she reminds her husband of who he is and helps him toward who he ought to be. It's a symmetrical definition - I think it has to be symmetrical or parallel for the marriage to succeed. I understand why Xtine of Squirrelx promised to "obey" her David, and even if I didn't believe that each woman has to define her own relationships, I would be reassured by David's promise to "honor" her. Living up to that, he'll never tell her to do anything that would be bad for her. For me, though, it's a straight mirror image, and there's nothing in my definition of a good wife that doesn't apply to a good husband except the second X chromosome.

On a subject related only in that there are numbers involved, I'll be telecommuting tomorrow because we're leaving at noon for our regatta and it lets me get more work time in. I've just calculated that I'll save about $10 in gas and lunch costs by staying home -- though of course that pales in comparison to the value of the time saved by not driving the 2-hour roundtrip.

Posted by dichroic at May 20, 2004 01:24 PM