Hi friend, how’s your day? Hope you’re doing okay. Sorry to report that I’m feeling a little under the weather a bit just now. No big deal, probably running a bit harder than I should, and playing on the weekend was more of a strain than I was up for. So today involves a little more downtime than I might like. It’s good to pay attention, though. So I do. Stuff’s moving along nicely for the musical, thanks for asking, although I’m still tweaking things a little bit here and there. But the cast is doing a wonderful job of lifting the work up off the page. It’s an amazing feeling, to hear the scenes of dialogue actually work, and the songs coming together with five voices. It’s good to know that this is really going to happen, and it’s going to be a good show for people. It’s one thing to believe, it’s another thing to start to see evidence. Feels good.
Funny that writing a musical was never part of my plan. It just sort of happened. Although I remember one very odd period of time in my younger years. Late childhood actually, I was maybe 13. For some reason I decided to write a musical. I have no idea why. But this’ll make you laugh–what I had been inspired to do was a musical adaptation of Shakespeare. Macbeth, no less. I know, madness. I have absolutely no idea why. I do remember cheerily hacking and slashing at the various speeches to try and get them to fit into some kind of sung structure. I had no clue what I was doing, of course. But I was sure doing it. I do remember that I was quite a way into things when I started to think, ‘Wait a minute, I’m re-writing Shakespeare’. Sort of put it down quietly and walked away embarrassed. Strange in many ways, eh?
Funny, I’d forgotten about that. Brought to mind another memory, no idea why. High school english class. Teacher points out that not only is Shakespeare great storytelling, but it’s all written in iambic pentameter. He shows us on the blackboard what that means, makes the little squiggles of stressed and unstressed syllables. My kid’s mind starts filling in words in the pattern he presents. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, that’s really neat how that works.’ and I make a few lines roll around in my head for fun. Then he says, ‘and that’s really hard.’ Without thinking what fell out of my mouth was, ‘No it isn’t.’ Alright, says he, everybody write me three lines of iambic pentameter now. The whole class groaned. Charming. I did. Just rattled off the two lines I had already figured and tagged a third on. I didn’t think much about it, figured it was no big deal. Still don’t. Sure didn’t help to make me mister popular, of course. Funny what sticks with you, eh?
Happily I have no urge to revisit revamping the bard. If I ever do, give me a poke would you. Thanks.