The first song.

Jackson enters NYU’s graduate program in musical-theater writing. He’s played piano since he was 8 but has never written a song. In class one day, a peer of Jackson’s, Darius Marcel Smith, who is gay, performs an original song about having a one-night stand and then feeling guilty about it and asking God for forgiveness. Jackson jots down a phrase in his notebook: “All those Black gay boys I knew who chose to go on back to the Lord.” That line, plus Tori Amos’s song “Pretty Good Year,” inspires him to write “Memory Song,” a collection of snapshots about growing up as a Black gay teen in a homophobic environment. It’s the first song he has ever written and will be the first song made for A Strange Loop. (The musical will go on to be dedicated to Smith, who died in 2019.)