the water can’t wash us away
Instead of getting work done, I’ve spent the week on Twitter, on Nashvillest, watching YouTube videos, and reading We Are Nashville over and over again.
Believe me, even I’m surprised by my reaction to this past weekend’s record rainfall and subsequent flooding. While it was raining, I just kept laughing about it. Libby and I ran around the Farmer’s Market and drove across the Korean Vets Bridge and barely gave the rain a second thought. I had rain boots and a rain coat, it was just water, what was the big deal?
The big deal was that in the span of 48 hours, some parts of metro Nashville received over 16 inches of rain. Averages across the city were 13 inches. Seem inconsequential?
Even using the most conservative conversion rate of 3 inches of heavy, wet snow to 1 inch of rain, that would be equal to more than THREE FEET of snow.
The big deal was that three hours after we left the Farmer’s Market, it was under six feet of water. Five hours after driving across the Korean Vets Bridge, it was blocked off to cars, having been turned into just another rapid in the Cumberland River’s ever-expanding flow.
If you’ve been following me on Twitter at all this week, you’ll know that this flood is pretty much all I can think about.
This city drowned in two days and stayed underwater for most of this week. Downtown is finally resurfacing. Opryland has been mostly pumped dry. Under the scorching rays of the sun (the sun, which promptly came out on Monday morning, almost mocking the previous two days’ oppressive clouds and rain) and the heat, Bellevue has finally dried out.
We’ve been under a mandatory water conservation order all week. I haven’t showered in two days. I’ve only flushed my toilet three times this week. I’m an habitual Nalgene drinker, refilling my 32 ounce water bottle at least three times a day at work, but this week, I bought a case of bottled water for the first time in my memory. I have hairy armpits and hairy legs, my hair is an absolute disaster mostly composed of excessive amounts of hairspray, I have very few clean clothes.
I’m not complaining.
Because I am just one of many Nashvillians who were unaffected by the flood but who are doing what we can for our neighbors.
I wish I had more money to give, because I would. I wish I were going to be here this weekend, because I’d volunteer.
I wish there was some way I could convey the absolute, gut-wrenching, gnawing, heart-aching response I’ve had to this situation this week. It’s consumed me.
And if you’re confused by that (coming from me), I can only say that I initially was, too.
But everything you’re hearing (or perhaps, not hearing) about Nashville and our response is true.
Yes, I’ve scoffed at this city, frequently, in fact, since moving here. I’ve even gone so far as to say I hate it here. I’ve complained about the South and Tennessee and the horrible Southern accents I hear everyday. I’ve even pitched hissy fits in downtown parking garages about how horrible Lower Broadway and those damn tourists are.
But in spite of all that, Nashville is where I live. Like it or not (and lately, I’ve been leaning a lot more towards like), I drive these streets everyday and I talk to these people everyday and when I drive back from Cincinnati and see that tacky, neon, self-conscious skyline, I sigh and think of how nice it is to be home.
Nashville is my home now. And as a Nashvillian, my heart and head are hurting for my city.
But even more than that, I’m swelling with pride at how well this city has conducted itself this week. When the sun came out on Monday, so did the volunteers and the calls to organize and rebuild and clean up. So did the donations and the charity events. Wednesday night, I went to Rebuild This City on Rock and Roll. Five local bands played (for free), cover charge was a donation of any amount you could give — some gave pennies and quarters, some gave $10, some gave $50, t-shirts and posters were available for a suggested $10 donation, tap water — normally free — was off limits. All told, in four hours, the broke hipsters and the hillbilly punk rockers and the scenesters raised over $11,000. And that’s just one event.
The telethon last night raised $1.7 million dollars, including a $500,000 contribution from our own Taylor Swift. CrossPointe church raised $10,000 in one day and got a matching contribution from a donor. Cool People Care raised $1200 in 45 minutes when their We Are Nashville shirts went online yesterday.
Maybe it’s a Southern thing, maybe it’s the fact that we live in the Volunteer State and it’s in our heritage to get out and help, but I haven’t encountered one person with a negative attitude or an unwillingness to help this week. Financially, physically, emotionally, we’re all trying to help each other out.
Mayor Dean expects damages to exceed $1.5 billion. The tourism industry (that I will no longer be able to scorn without feel guilty) on which this city’s economy is based is crushed. The 2000 room Opryland Hotel and Convention Center isn’t expected to reopen for 6 months. Yes, we’ll rebuild, and yes, we’ll be back on our feet, but at what cost?
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look badly on this city again. I’ve ordered two We Are Nashville bumper stickers, one for my truck, one for the new car I’ll eventually get. I bought a Music City shirt at Rebuild This City. I ordered a We Are Nashville shirt this afternoon. All of that money I spent, because people in this city are just that amazing, is going directly to help with disaster relief.
I know this may not seem like a big deal to the rest of the country or to the rest of the world. And admittedly, there are bigger and more worrisome things going on in this world than a flood. But it’s happening in my front yard and I normally would never ask this of anyone, but if you’re feeling generous, please visit Hands on Nashville or the Community Fund of Middle Tennessee to learn more about how you can help us recover. We’re also collecting unused gift cards in place of cash, so if you have any gift cards you don’t think you’ll ever use, please send them to me and I’ll let you know exactly how they’re being used.
As East Nashville’s own Will Hoge says, “Down here, we’re washed by the water / the water can’t wash us away.”
We are Nashville.
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Tags: home, hope, love, Nashville, Nashville Flood, water conservation, We are Nashville, weather
For how quintessentially Nashville today has been, the soundtrack to my afternoon is a little incongruous. Rather than doing my Christmas shopping to the tune of someone like Nashville native, Will Hoge, I did my shopping to the snap, crackle, and pop sound of The Minor Leagues.
The Minor Leagues, or TML as they’re known by their fans and friends, not only come from my hometown, but their founding members also happen to be one of my best friends and one of my former colleagues. My journalistic integrity is shot to hell by that sentence alone, but suffice it to say that The Minor Leagues know how to take pop-punk and turn it into something that is not only tolerable, but is in fact immensely enjoyable.
Patrick and Ben first put TML together in 2001 and, after a revolving door of 56 other band members, have just put out their fifth album, This Story Is Old, I Know, But It Goes On. If putting out five albums in eight years doesn’t give The Minor Leagues enough credibility in your book, how about a slot at last summer’s MidPoint Music Festival, a feature and photo shoot for Cincinnati’s CityBeat magazine, and more airplay on WOXY than Thom Yorke?
This Story Is Old… is a nearly perfect soundtrack to the messiness of being a twenty-something. Whether that’s because it was written by twenty-somethings or because it was written by twenty-somethings who also record their music in the bedroom of my best friend’s house, I don’t know. This record is so…normal. And it’s one-hundred percent relatable because of that.
Ben Walpole’s voice is like bubble gum gone hard, and flavored more like PBR than candy. His song writing is pretty epic, too, which is hilarious to me because it seems nearly impossible to reconcile the Ben Walpole I know with the Ben Walpole who comes through in these eleven songs. There are some absolute gems on this album. “Good Boys” is a fun bop that will always remind me of the last time I saw The Minor Leagues play at Southgate House. “Projections of a Person” is an incredibly practical, and therefore all the more sweet, love story. But “A Chance Encounter (In Cincinnati Tonight)” might be the album’s standout track. Possibly because staying “up late in Cincinnati” is one of my favorite pasttimes.
This Story Is Old… incorporates all kinds of nontraditional sounds. The liner notes not only list the five main members of the band, there’s also a “Featuring” list highlighting trumpets and violas, in addition to a “With” list of various handclappers (including Amber and Katrina), laughers, whistlers, and even a cameo vocal performance by Katrina and Patrick’s cat, Evgeny Meowlkins.
All told, This Story Is Old, I Know, But It Goes On is a happy-go-lucky, pop record that is infinitely listenable. It not only makes me proud to call Cincinnati my hometown, it also makes me proud of my extremely talented friends. I might be biased, but The Minor Leagues ought to be playing in the major leagues.
You can check TML out on Last.fm and download a few tracks for free. This Story Is Old… is also available for purchase from Data Was Lost.
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Tags: BookMan/BookWoman, Cincinnati, friends, Grimey's, music, Nashville, The Minor Leagues, This Story Is Old I Know But It Goes On
only love is all maroon
It’s days like this that make Nashville start to feel like home for me. I drove up to Hillsboro Village to browse the shelves at Bookman Bookwoman, and driving down 21st Avenue South, I was struck by just how pretty Nashville is. The yellow leaves of the trees clash so vibrantly with the painted reds and blues of the brick storefronts, you’d think the trees were changing colors on purpose, just to enhance the kitschiness. The sun coming over the rooftops was reflected off BMW windshields and cyclists’ sunglasses. And the Sunday brunch crowd at Pancake Pantry wound all the way around the block to Wedgewood.
Days like this bring out the best of Nashville. The students taking a break from studying to enjoy what will most likely be the last sunny days of the year, before the winter rains start falling. The small crowd of Bengals fans sitting on the patio at Sam’s, yelling “Who Dey!” to each other and putting a tiny grin on my face, thinking about my mom tailgating at home. The hipsters and artists sitting on the corner, rolling cigarettes and selling paintings and screen prints. The families holding their kids’ hands as they cross the street, ignoring, like everyone else, the crosswalks and street signs. The tourists, poking their heads in shops and marvelling at the fact that no, Nashville isn’t just about country music. The cyclists and the runners and the dog-walkers. It seemed like everyone wanted to be out today.
It’s days like today that make me adore Nashville, make me want to adopt it as my permanent second home. The sun and the books spilling off the shelves at Bookman and the Egg McFido I had to wait twenty minutes in line for and the guy riding his bike up 21st Avenue holding, not the handlebars, but a tiny black puppy instead. This is what Sundays are made for. They’re for forgetting the nausea I feel when I think about going back to work on Monday; they’re about burying the sinking feeling I get when I think about where I want my life to go and what I want to do with myself; they’re for imagining life as it could be.
The amazing thing about days like today is that they give me the impression that things just might work out. When I walked into Bookman and found, almost right away, a beautiful hardcover edition of a book I’ve just promised a friend I’d read in exchange for his reading A Tale of Two Cities. Its binding is coming loose and it smells like an attic, but it was only $8.95 and it’s so old it doesn’t even have a copyright page. But it’s that kind of serendipity that makes me feel like I don’t have to know exactly what I’m doing right now. It makes me feel like I can just take the days as they come and work on getting where I want to be in the meantime.
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Tags: a little personal, adventure, Nashville
She recommended Bazan, but in the end, when I got to Grimey’s and did a test-listen of each album, the Avett Brothers, in addition to catching my ear, really captured my heart.
The album comes, not with liner notes, but with a 500-word “mission statement” from Seth Avett, which, if you can squint enough to read the tiny type, is well worth the effort. It’s a sweet precursor to the love songs contained inside. And if I’m honest, it made me a little weepy when I’d finished reading it. (A good indication of the album’s quality, in my opinion. And I wasn’t let-down.)
The title track, and ablum opener, “I and Love and You” is slow and steady, with an almost Beatles-esque piano/percussion combination, and vocal harmonies as discordant and lovely as the sounds of the city to which the refrain refers: “Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in.”
With a title like I and Love and You, it’s obvious that the theme of the album would be love, and while songs like “January Wedding” and “Kick Drum Heart” are endearing for their plodding banjos and heavy percussion respectively, for me, the most beautiful and truly stand-out tracks are the ones that don’t deal with love, but instead refer to the insecurities and uncertainties of life.
“Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise” is easily the best track on the album. It’s got everything: pianos, strings, full, throaty vocals, and stellar lyrics. Another standout, “The Perfect Space”, is a quirky punk rock anthem sandwiched between two slices of a lonely and uncertain melody. The combination is better than a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, and the punk rock filling lends a little lightness to an album that borders almost on depressive.
“Ill With Want”, “Tin Man”, and “Incomplete and Insecure” round out the album nicely, splicing the second half’s love songs with little doses of confusion, introspection, and obviously, insecurity.
The album’s shifts are unsubtle, but I don’t know if that’s a problem. Most of the songs transition illogically or abruptly into the next song, with little room for digestion in between. It’s less an album to be played front-to-back than it is to be shuffled and skipped. I don’t ever like to say a song is annoying if I really love the band or love the album, but a couple of I and Love and You‘s tracks really take away from the magic of the rest.
All-in-all, it’s a solid album from a band I’d been unfamiliar with until about a month ago. After my first few listens, I liked their sound enough to seek out the rest of their discography, and I’m slowly getting to know their decade’s worth of tunes. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover the Avett Brothers early enough to secure tickets to their Halloween night gig at the Ryman. It’s been sold out for weeks, Craigslist posters won’t respond to my emails, and I’ve been out-bid on eBay a few times.
You can listen to the title track here and I highly recommend it.
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Tags: I and Love and You, The Avett Brothers
i love the color of it all
I was familiar with the Irish band, in the sense that I’d heard a few of their songs in the past, and thanks to Lightning 100, I could sing along to their catchy single, “The Great Defector”. But the music that came out of those five guys from that tiny stage was nothing like I was prepared to hear. Based on the poppy beat and quirky lyrics of “The Great Defector”, I was expecting something like the Talking Heads to surround me with snyth and funk. What I got sounded more like the Great Lake Swimmers, with an ethereal, intangible sound. Tony Dekker’s voice might be a heavy Canadian fog slowly covering the ground, but Paul Noonan’s quiet Irish lilt was like scythed hay in late summer, dripping in golds and oranges and reds.
Their performance was a perfect harmonization of four different voices and instruments as varied as a child’s Casio keyboard, cowbells, a space-ship-rock-‘n’-roll type guitar, a kazoo, a harmonica, a tiny tambourine, and as many as four kinds of guitars occasionally playing all at once. And though their studio albums include that harbinger of musical joy, the banjo, they never did bring it out last night. Bell x1 is kind of a musical hybrid: something along the lines of Radiohead meets Great Lake Swimmers meets Glen Hansard. They’re uptempo and raucous, while still emanating something subdued and melancholy. Paul Noonan’s occasional falsetto shook me to bones. At other times, his whisky-warm voice drowned the tiny bar in sultriness.
Aside from their undeniably cool sound, Bell x1 put on a really fun and engaging performance. I’m fairly certain Paul Noonan was reasonably drunk when they took the stage, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that five Irish gentlemen would down shots of whisky at an alarming rate and still manage to remain standing. And playing their instruments coherently. They closed out one of their songs with a brief cover of Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel”, but made it all their own, so much so that for a minute, I couldn’t assign the lyrics to any song I’d ever heard, even though I was clearly singing along. They told kitschy little anecdotes about enjoying Nashville’s Pancake Pantry and being stunned by the disclaimers on Lays Light Potato Chips, warning of possible anal leakage. Of Bell x1’s four albums, only two are available in the US, but Paul Noonan announced that we should “feel free to steal our records from the internet. It’s all about spreading and sharing the music.”
The highlight of the set came with “Eve the Apple of My Eye”, a slow, tender song oozing with sensuality and some Hold Steady-esque religious grappling. Later, Noonan introduced the song “Amelia” by pointing out that he and Earhart’s co-pilot, Fred Noonan, share the same surname. “I once did a geneology and it turns out that maybe, it’s unlikely, but maybe Fred’s my great-great-grandad or something,” he said with a grin. The song itself was a tinkling little story about what might have happened in the Electra when Noonan and Earhart realized they were going down. I wonder did they kick back when they knew the game was up? Or maybe they went on to grow oranges and pears/on their own island, Amelia and Fred.
At the end of the set, Noonan asked if we wanted them to leave the stage before returning for an encore, but told us it was his preference not to go. “It seems like a long walk to the back of the room just to come back up here a minute later.” On the suggestion of some tipsy ned in the front, they ended the night with “One Stringed Harp”, which in turn faded into a cover of The Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?” and with that, I ducked out into the breezy Nashville night, happy and pleasantly surprised by the music I’d found inside.
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Tags: 3rd & Lindsley, Bell x1, gigs, Nashville
hear all the bombs fade away
So it looks like the new plan will have to wait until Tuesday.
I’ve been waiting to see The Decemberists live for months, possibly years. Possibly since the day I accidentally fell upon “Red Right Ankle” and began my love affair with Colin Meloy. So much of who I am is tangled up in their music that they’re permanently enshrined on my ribs. And tonight, I finally got to see them on stage, in one of the coolest and most historic venues Nashville has to offer.
I knew going in that this gig was going to be fantastic. The first half of the show was dedicated to The Hazards of Love. The Decemberists, along with guest performers Becky Stark and Shara Worden, performed the album in its entirety. And when I say performed, I mean really performed. All they needed were props and costume changes, and they could have put the best Broadway productions to shame. The Hazards of Love is a rock opera, and their performance of it tonight practically made it into Jesus Christ Superstar.
There were lights and instrument changes, and Becky dressed as Margaret and Shara dressed as a jealous queen. There was (frankly terrible and improvised) choreography. They were dramatic and serious and, yes, energetic, but almost like they were just trying too hard to put on a show–and not as if they were the goofy, quirky musicians their fans know and love. Don’t get me wrong, The Hazards of Love was an incredible performance. And somehow, the story’s arc was more vivid performed live than listened to on the record. I was able to appreciate the album as something new and entirely different.
Colin Meloy posted earlier this week on Twitter that he was suffering from a scratchy throat. At first, it wasn’t terribly noticable. There was a little strain here and there, but when he started into “The Rake’s Song”, it was apparent just how tired and exhausted he seemed. Aside from that, though, “The Rake’s Song” was the highlight of the first set: in addition to John Moen’s drumset, Chris Funk, Shara and Becky, and Jenny Conlee all played individual drums in synchronization, under criss-crossing, spooky white lights. One of my least favorite songs on that album, it was performed in a way that made it haunting and eerie, rather than sinister.
When Meloy and Stark finally sang their last notes as William and Margaret in “The Drowned”, they took a brief intermission, and the crowd collectively heaved a sigh. It had been a very intense hour.
When the band reconvened on stage, it was to an uproarious crowd and with significantly more joviality on their part. The Decemberists, all quirky and nerdy and awkward and silly, had finally arrived. Commenting on the need to appease the “ghosts of Ryman Auditorium”, Colin Meloy wailed and warbled through several ghost stories in a row: “Leslie Ann Levine”, “Eli, The Barrowboy”, the double-suicide anthem, “We Both Go Down Together”. They played “The Bachelor and the Bride” and then turned autobiographical with “an undisclosed member of the band’s personal experience with a YMCA sports program” in “The Sporting Life”.
Meloy was in high spirits, indeed for his second go-’round. He had the audience on our feet, clapping and laughing along to “the worst song I’ve ever, ever written”: a hilarious four-line song about Dracula’s daughter. This was followed by the story of how, after realizing how terrible it was, God promptly shed one enormous tear, which splashed down to Earth and flooded the world, but irrigation systems were developed out of this tragedy and from the flood, the city of Nashville was born and God told country music singers to “go forth and be twangy”.
Next was “O, Valencia!”, to which I screamed and thrased along. And “Billy Liar” became an all-out romp as, for the closing “ba-ba-ba-dum”s, Meloy divided the main floor into “house left” and “house right” (“And if you don’t know what that means, ask the drama fag sitting next to you to explain the etymology of those terms. Because let’s face it, at a show like this, at least one person next to you is a drama fag!”) and gave us each our own parts to sing, throwing in a sort of “alley-ooop” for the participants in the balcony. He then conducted us, allowing us to sing in his place for several minutes while he narrated and encouraged and laughed.
When, finally, he gave the signal to cut us off after a rousing crescendo, Shara Worden and Becky Stark rejoined the group on stage for an amazing cover of Heart’s “Crazy on You”. Bows taken and thank-yous given, they took the shortest of breaks before coming back for an encore, hailed back to the stage by several hundred feet stomping and hands pounding on the wooden pews that comprise the Ryman’s seating.
The encore was brief, but wonderful. Colin delighted us by performing a new song, something sweet and tender about winter and January and much more like the Decemberists of Castaways and Cutouts than of The Hazards of Love. Though I was hoping for it, and really expecting them to play it, they never did play “The Crane Wife”, versions I, II, or III. Instead, they ended the show with “Sons & Daughters”, which was really quite perfect. And when they got to the last refrain, “hear all the bombs fade away”, they surpised us all by asking and encouraging everyone to hop on stage and join them. Nearly half the main floor seemed to take them up on the offer, and if it weren’t for my path being blocked on both sides, I would have been up there in an instant, too.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating at all when I say that tonight’s show was the best gig of my life.
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Tags: Colin Meloy, gigs, Nashville, Ryman Auditorium, The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love
no good deed goes unpunished
Almost everyone I know who has read or attempted to read Wicked, Gregory Maguire’s imagined, revisionist prequel to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, has said it’s slow and awful and exhausting to get through. I’ve heard it’s disappointing compared to the musical, compared to the 1939 film, compared to Baum’s originial. I’ve heard it’s strange and bizarre and unusual. So when I attempted to read it last year, I approached it with that mindset. And I hated it. All five pages I made it through.
And then I saw Wicked on stage last weekend and figured it couldn’t really be that far off the book, could it? And if I loved the musical so much, I couldn’t really hate the book, could I?
No, I couldn’t.
It’s easy to understand why some people would be put off by the novel. The musical is sort of a mindless melodrama, with darker themes, yes; but the novel is philosophical, political, and haunting. It comes as a bit of a shock after all that singing and dancing. And so, yes, understandably, readers expecting Glinda to float around in a bubble are going to be surprised to instead find a pertinent discussion of human rights, power, and the nature of evil.
The scope of Maguire’s story was breathtaking. From the thoroughly imagined personalities of his characters (and they are as much his as they are Baum’s), to the details of Oz and it’s four countries, to the philosophies, mythologies, and allegories hiding just under the surface of his words. Fashioning characters and telling their story is difficult enough when the medium is strictly fiction. When it’s a fantasy world they inhabit, and somebody else’s fantasy world, at that, the talent required for an author to pull off that trick successfully is incredible.
A friend recently told me that he wasn’t ever able to develop any kind of concern for or relationship with the characters in Maguire’s world. I disagree, and personally, I loved the novel. I devoured Wicked in three days and found myself really attached to Elphaba. Part of it might be that I tended to share her worldview, part of it might be that I felt really and truly sorry for her. I think a lot of it was just that so many of the mistakes she made were not mistakes: they were actions with results gone awry, or they were careful decisions completely misinterpreted by the rest of the world. Elphaba’s life was a series of miscommunications, of missed communications, and a tragic lack of understanding.
Sure, she was haughty and bitter and even, on ocassion, a little mean-spirited. But never wicked, never evil. Essentially, that’s the question left burning in the reader’s mind when the last page is turned: What is evil? Is it, as so many characters in the book claim, an absence of goodness? Is it a tangible thing each of us are in danger of picking up? Is it determined by our intentions or our actions? And why was Elphaba so willing to assign the label of Wicked to herself?
He lingered at the door, and said, “The Lion wants courage, the Tin Man a heart, and the Scarecrow brains. Dorothy wants to go home. What do you want?”
…She couldn’t say forgiveness, not to Liir. She started to say “a soldier,” to make fun of his mooning affections over the guys in uniform. But realizing even as she said it that he would be hurt, she caught herself halfway, and in the end what came out of her mouth surprised them both. She said, “A soul–“
In the end, Elphaba is a sad, tragic heroine. She’s wracked with guilt–for her sister, for her father, for Doctor Dillamond, for Fiyero, especially Fiyero, and even later, for his family. She’s consumed with grief and frustration and the fear of being used against her will. But she’s likable, and she’s deeply human.
Maguire poses several questions in Wicked, but answers few. One of the cool things about this novel is its ability to both reframe a well-known story and to explore the unknown hows and whys of the Wicked Witch of the West. But his diction is lush and rich, and maybe the best thing about this novel is the way Maguire encourages his reader to fall in love with the magic of the English language all over again.
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Tags: Gregory Maguire, literature, Wicked
it’s time to try defying gravity
Some people were raised on rock ‘n’ roll, and while I was to a point, too, I was mostly raised on musical theater. My grandmother was always involved in some drama guild or other, and during the years we spent living with her, our bedtime stories were told through Broadway showtunes and our Saturday afternoons were spent watching all four hours of The Fiddler on the Roof on VHS or watching Gypsy on TV over and over again.
The summer nights we spent attending performances at Cincinnati Young People’s Theater eventually translated, for me, into a love of performing and being on stage. I was never very good of an actress, or a singer, or a dancer, but in high school, I joined the drama club and belted my heart out in musicals and tried not to screw up my few lines in the fall play. In college, I played a character named Whitney who was an alcoholic and sufferer of PTSD in an anti-war dramatic reading of A Piece of My Heart. But being in drama was never about acting for me, it was about being a part of something that has the power to really, really touch people.
Last night, after more than a year of waiting, I finally saw Wicked at TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall. I was familiar with the music, familiar with the story, and familiar with all the praise and rave reviews it’s received since it opened on Broadway six years ago. I would have seen it last September at the Aronoff in Cincinnati, in the front row no less, if our tickets hadn’t been for the same night I was moving to Nashville. So instead, I bought two tier level tickets for my mom’s birthday and last night, we took our red velvet seats four rows back in the first tier.
All the praise and esteem and expectactions I had going in were completely blown out of the water. The sets! The costumes! The lighting! The choreography! The . . .everything! Everything about this musical far exceeded all the hope I had for it.
From Glinda’s floating bubble to the flying monkeys to Elphaba’s show- and heart-stopping flight to the gorgeousness of the Emerald City, it was all so overwhelming. I was crying by the end of Elphaba’s first solo, “The Wizard and I”, just from the sheer talent and range of Marcie Dodd’s voice. To say I was paralyzed with joy is an understatement, but every single scene brought something more amazing than the last and it was impossible to look away, even for a moment.
The story was so much sadder and more interesting than I imagined it would be. And knowing my penchant for tragic heroes, I was on Elphaba’s side from the beginning. And though the quote that opens this post comes from a conversation between Fiyero and Elphaba about beauty, the cool thing is that it’s completely representative of the whole story. Wicked isn’t a lie about the Wicked Witch of the West, it’s looking at what wickedness really is. Glinda asks, “Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?” And the story of Wicked gives a very clear answer to that question.
I posted to Twitter at intermission that I had already been blown away. A lot of that had to do with the fact that Act I’s closing scene, “Defying Gravity” was so powerful and visually stunning that my bones were shaking in time to the music and Elphaba’s grand exit practically made my head explode. Even now, just listening to the soundtrack, I’ve got chills. If tonight’s closing show wasn’t sold out, I’d happily pay to go again.
I tried to read Gregory Macguire’s novel awhile ago, but didn’t give it much of an effort. Last night’s show has encouraged me to try it again. I know there are differences, but I like the idea of being able to access the story of the Wicked Witch as I know her now over and over again.
The only thing left to think about is if the rumored film adaptation can possibly compare to the imaginative and beautiful world of Wicked on stage?
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Tags: Andrew Jackson Hall, Broadway, musicals, Nashville, plays, theater, TPAC, Wicked
Feet on Polished Floor 