Okay, so me and Mr. Music got together last night and started messing with this ‘thing’ I have in my mind. I’ve wanted to write a musical since I was in my teens, and his self-appointed job is to fix me with his kindly yet piercing gaze and say, “So nu? you going to write this thing already?” Last night I laid out what I want to be the linking device between the songs… Gizmo is ‘quacking’ again, lost my train of thought…. oh yeah, and then recited the lyrics to the pirate song. Because any modern musical must have pirates and ninjas. OH and unicorns, more than one kind of fairy, zombies (I haven’t written the ‘song’ they will sing yet but I know how the chorus will go), squid (as mentioned).
When he showed me a printout of my blogpost from yesterday, wishing to expand on it, I almost burst into tears. Then, abruptly, I thought I might be standing on the edge of one of those hills in the badlands, the ones made out of solid bentonite clay, during a heavy rainstorm. I’m about to slide down one of those bastards, and when I get to the bottom, I’ll be filthy, scuffed and exhausted, but it will have been a hell of a ride.
Then we had a LONG discussion about libretto, composition, the role of insanity in creativity (I’ve got some stuff to look up now), ignoring cost and just writing what we want. Because the most exhilarating aspect of this is that my luck has provided me with the perfect partner for this enterprise; if I could express in words my longing for such a thing, and how I’ve longed for it over the course of my whole life, then I’d be a GOOD writer. Musicals are all about longing….. and how to most perfectly delineate it, elaborate on it, and then satisfy it. I don’t want to be part of Rodgers and Hammerstein. But if I could get a corner torn off the page of Comden and Green and stick it in my scrapbook, my word, I would be happy. There’s only one way to leave the theatre! Singing! Thanks, Mr. Music, I’m in a very up kind of mood today, which is good, because the weather is VILE.
