Being alive with Sondheim
Broadway legend is turning 90. In these times, let’s celebrate what he taught us about love
Stephen Sondheim is 90 on Sunday. What a time to have a birthday! I could write, I suppose, about Sondheim and the coronavirus. As with Shakespeare, who knew from the plague, you can apply Sondheim to every moment, even this unimaginable one, for Sondheim might not be God but he most certainly is life. But who needs such a column right now?
Let’s just celebrate all that he has taught us about love – so far. And I’ll make it personal. I’ll talk about my own wedding.
In July 1999. In an old museum in Huron City, Michigan. To Gillian Darlow. All our parents were still alive and well. We planned an all-Sondheim program, performed by friends.
First up was “Marry Me a Little,” a controversial song given the circumstances. It’s from Company (1970), one of Sondheim’s best and a show about a confirmed bachelor named Robert, stuck on the edge of change and self-knowledge. (If the world were not unmoored, I would have been reviewing the latest Broadway revival within hours of writing this column, but we’re just not going there.)
Why is “Marry Me a Little” such a masterpiece? It’s a song about commitment, really, and about how, when we are young, we think that we can make some kind of bargain that allows for love and independence in some predetermined package with clear boundaries. “Marry me a little,” Robert sings, “love me just enough. Cry, but not too often. Play, but not too tough. Keep a tender distance, So we’ll both be free. That’s the way it ought to be.”
But, as we understand life better, we figure out that no one can really love someone “just enough,” nor cry but not too often, nor play but not too rough. (I’m not touching the “tender distance” line right now.) That’s because we can never predict what lies ahead for us, or how we will change, or how life will change us. This is a song that understands the crucial role of humility and vulnerability in love, maybe better than any song ever written.
In his book Finishing the Hat, Sondheim says that “Marry Me a Little” is “an internal monologue of despair and self-deceptive determination.” I could make political parallels with one of our current leaders, who does not seem to understand that to live is to love. But we’re not going there.
“Loving You,” our next choice, is a song from Passion (1994). It’s sung by an obsessive character named Fosca, who insists that our feelings are not controlled by our intellect. “Loving you is not a choice, it’s who I am,” she sings, telling us that love is “not much reason to rejoice,” a reference to how our feelings aren’t controlled by our intellect.
If we lose someone we love, we can’t just rationalize that they’re gone, and we can’t do anything about it, so therefore there is no point in feeling the pain we feel. On the contrary, we cannot help ourselves. Loving is not in our control.
But Fosca also sings that love is what gives our life purpose and reason and direction. I could make a parallel with some of the sacrifices that we’re all making right now so some of us can continue to love those we love, and how staying home is not so much the right thing to be doing as the only thing to be doing. But we’re not going there.
“Not a Day Goes By,” which came next that beautiful summer Saturday, comes from Merrily We Roll Along (1981) and can be sung either mournfully or rapturously. That’s because it is a perfect musical capsulation of the very same truth expressed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who wrote in 1849, “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” (It just rarely feels that way.)
A young woman named Beth has figured out that she cannot stay married to a man who has been unfaithful, but she’s also smart enough to know that she never can erase this relationship from her life.
“Not a Day Goes By,” she sings, “Not a blessed day, but you’re still somehow part of my life, and you won’t go away. So there’s hell to pay. Until I die.”
That hell, though, is not necessarily as bad as Beth maybe thinks in that moment. This is very much a song about loss. It can be about a busted relationship or about bereavement. It doesn’t matter. After all, every loving relationship has to end, or, at least change form. But where we can, it is better to keep these bonds alive. But we’re not going there.
Our last marital selection? “Being Alive,” also from Company, as also sung by Adam Driver’s messed-up character in the Oscar-nominated movie Marriage Story. This is Sondheim’s ultimate love song.
It states better than any other song in the history of the universe that to love is to live. If we don’t love, we can’t live. We all flail around trying to define what love means, of course, in whatever are the terms of the ever-changing moment. But Sondheim simply distills all of that nonsense to its essence.
“Someone to hold me too close. Someone to hurt me too deep. Someone to sit in my chair, And ruin my sleep, And make me aware, Of being alive. Being alive.”
So if we were going there, I would say that if there is someone in your home right now sitting in your chair, or ruining your sleep or forcing you to care more than you think you have time for, maybe someone as frightened as you right now, then that is a good thing. A really good thing.
You are rich.
I guess Sondheim led us there.