The In-between 5/25
Or Poetry, The Word Search, and some Non-Sondheim media
I think my favorite art is art that I connect with and also fundamentally don’t fully understand. In the way that I seem to live most of my life in extremes, it’s a middle road I seem to be able to hold inside pretty comfortably. My favorite poem is this poem I read in high school called “What He Thought” by Heather McHugh. It feels like two poems more then it feels like one, the first half is about being a writer in Italy, and the second part is about this man named Giordano Bruno (who there’s a statue of in the public square) who had been burned “because of his offence against authority, which was to say/ the Church.” It ends like this:
The day they brought him forth to die
they feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.
That is how they burned him.
That is how he died,
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry—
(we’d all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly)— poetry
is what he thought, but did not say.
And to this day I don’t really understand what that last line means. I’ve never come to a conclusion about it. I mean--I’ve had some leads over the years, but nothing definite. But, I think I like--in a sort of a way--to artistically chew on it. I think that if I were ever not a bit genuinely confused by it, I might be artistically dead. I think that by returning to it over and over again to ponder and admire, it keeps me alive. It excites me to not have that answer, it inspires me to not have it, it motivates me to keep trying to understand, wondering why it totally resonates and not knowing why.
Assassins scratches a similar itch. I don’t get it, but I get the idea that I could. It scratches that part of my brain that weirdly enough Anyone Can Whistle does. I don’t think I’ve felt this way about a show since then. A Little Night Music came close though. Even Steve says that while writing Assassins they were really close to being audacious, but that “smartass” is an inch left of audacious as they found out with Anyone Can Whistle.
The truth is I don’t know what Assassins is saying. It says so many things. So many things that my heart understands, but my head has a hard way of computing. It says so many things, and I don’t understand what its take on things is. I know that the song “Another National Anthem” is stirring and intense and it makes me... yearn. It makes me yearn! And it makes me hum, “the mailman won the lottery” both cynically and not.
Even all the assassins, as ready as I am to be sympathetic to all of them (and maybe it’s a flaw of mine, because I am) none of them actually made any difference. That’s the ultimate irony of “Another National Anthem.” Good points fellas, still didn’t do anything! The Balladeer is also wrong, but he’s no more wrong then the assassins who seduce him.
And then what do we fall back on? “Fall if you have to, but Lady make a noise.” All roads lead back to Anyone Can Whistle in these essays. The assassins do that, “If you can’t do what you have to, then you do the things you can.” But so does the Balladeer, “Goes to show:/ When you lose/ What you do is try again.”
They aren’t all that different.
That’s the problem with Assassins, that’s the great enjoyment! Yes, and! I agree with both the Balladeer and the assassins! There is so much ironic enjoyment and so much genuineness in it as well. “Another National Anthem” poses the Balladeer against the assassins, but the truth is they are both right. Who you agree with is entirely dependent on if the subway was late or on-time! On if you’ve got hope or cynicism in your heart. You enjoy it both ways, often at the same time.
It’s also not the only place this shows up, “Unworthy of Your Love” is both a great love song and personally about love for real people or it’s obsessive at best, and nonconsensual at worst. “Ballad of Guiteau” is creepy and also the first song that hooked me as...fun? “Everybody’s Got The Right”’s line of “Everybody’s got the right/ To some sunshine/ Not the sun/ But maybe one/ Of its beams” is genuinely inspiring! I often remind myself of my own ambition by thinking of my own personal beam. The same song describes the guns that were used to kill the presidents in detail. Ew.
Assassins is at odds with itself. Good. It should be. America is complicated. Good theater is complicated. Great theater is really complicated. I’m sure there is an answer to Assassins, and I’m sure that I will get the great privilege of a lifetime to figure it out. That’s why this show is my favorite Sondheim show. It overtook Anyone Can Whistle. They’re so similar, but Assassins wins out because of John Weidman’s brilliant book. Sondheim, naturally, fires on all cylinders with both.
Confusedly,
Ava
