And we’re gonna sing it anyway

I saw “Hadestown” yesterday afternoon.  Highly, highly recommended.

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So, one of the last things Steve said to me, as events happened to run this time, was, “I still think you could’ve done ‘way better than me.” Which was an odd thing for him to say, “better” being the slippery slope that it is.

Which brings us back to “Hadestown” — yes, I am still nattering on about a show; this one’s going to take a while to settle in, despite I knew how it was going to end.

Someone said they’d seen a production of Hadestown with a different Hermes, which had changed the entire tone of the show, as it would*.

In this production, from the moment Hermes walked on stage, gentle and frail, greeting his people with hugs, smiles, and a kiss, you knew you were in good hands, and, as much as a god can ever do, he was going to tell you the truth. In fact, he does tell the truth, right up front: It’s an old song. It’s a sad song. And we’re gonna sing it anyway.

And, yanno, it’s not the ending that matters, but the miracles that are made along the way.

Someone else asked me how I’d “born up,” which — nobody used to ask me these things. I held it together until about halfway through “Hold My Own” — “I knew you before we met/And I don’t even know you yet.” Which happens to be an exact description of my meeting with Steve.  I’m always happy to see such things affirmed, in real life and in art, and I wish people would believe art more often.** Also? I wouldn’t have changed one line spoken or sung in this play.

All that said — time to find breakfast, and then go to work.

How’s everybody doing today?

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*point in case: I challenge you to listen to “Back in the High Life,” by Steve Winwood, and then by Warren Zevon, or vice-versa, but definitely back to back, for a stern lesson in How The Narrator Makes the story.

**Way back, I used to get letters from people scolding me for perpetuating the myth of love at first sight, a myth which was formed, according to my correspondents, to trap women. And now we apparently have quite a lot of people who wish to reduce love to a capitalist theory, and you have to ask yourself — if it wasn’t true, that love can change the world, even for a little time, why would they be so very afraid?