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From plattc@optonline.net
Subject Re: Sad Songs
Date Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:26:20 +0000 (GMT)

[Part 1 text/plain us-ascii (4.2 kilobytes)] (View Text in a separate window)

Hey cool.  Glad to see a Sondhead among the Auditeers.

The Sondheim song that gets me is a bit more oblique (big surprise with Sondheim), and it's as much the music as the lyrics that get me on this one.  It captures the bustle of NYC, the energy, the freneticism and underlying loneliness of being lost in a crowd.  From Company, "Another Hundred People":

Another hundred people just got off of the train
And came up through the ground,
While another hundred people just got off of the bus
And are looking around
At another hundred people who got off of the plane
And are looking at us
Who got off of the train
And the plane and the bus
Maybe yesterday.

It's a city of strangers,
Some come to work, some to play.
A city of strangers,
Some come to stare, some to stay.
And every day
The ones who stay
Can find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks,
By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks,
And they walk together past upholstered walls with the crude remarks.
And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never
know.
"Do I pick you up or do I meet you there or shall we let it go?"
"Did you get my message? 'Cause I looked in vain."
"Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn't rain?"
"Look, I'll call you in the morning or my service will explain."
And another hundred people just got off of the train.

It's a city of strangers,
Some come to work, some to play.
A city of strangers,
Some come to stare, some to stay.
And every day
Some go away
Or they find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks,
By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks,
And they walk together past upholstered walls with the crude remarks.
And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never
know.
"Do I pick you up or do I meet you there or shall we let it go?"
"Did you get my message? 'Cause I looked in vain."
"Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn't rain?"
"Look, I'll call you in the morning or my service will explain."
And another hundred people just got off of the train.
And another hundred people just got off of the train,
And another hundred people just got off of the train,
And another hundred people just got off of the train.
Another hundred people just got off of the train.

Much of Sunday in the Park with George tears me up too, about an artist (Georges Seurat, specifically) who wants nothing more than connection but he just can't connect to the woman he loves.

Another vote goes to a more obviously maudlin choice, Mike Viola's "Painkillers".  Knowing that it's autobiographical makes it that much more brutal.

----- Original Message -----
From: Henry Laura 
Date: Sunday, February 11, 2007 10:36 pm
Subject: Re: Sad Songs
To: audities@smoe.org

> Last night I had the (un) guilty pleasure of seeing a concert 
> version of Stephen Sondheim's Follies performed at New York's 
> City 
> Center. There were multiple Tony winners in the cast including 
> Victoria Clark who sang the part of Sally Durant Plummer. Sally 
> married Buddy but always loved Ben. She performed Losing My 
> Mind 
> alone with a soft light and it truly tore me up; unrequited love 
> indeed. 
> 
> LOSING MY MIND
> 
> The sun comes up,
> I think about you.
> The coffee cup,
> I think about you.
> I want you so,
> It's like I'm losing my mind.
> The morning ends,
> I think about you.
> I talk to friends,
> I think about you.
> And do they know?
> It's like I'm losing my mind.
> All afternoon,
> Doing every little chore,
> The thought of you stays bright.
> Sometimes I stand
> In the middle of the floor,
> Not going left,
> Not going right.
> I dim the lights
> And think about you,
> Spend sleepless nights
> To think about you.
> You said you loved me,
> Or were you just being kind?
> Or am I losing my mind?
> I want you so,
> It's like I'm losing my mind.
> Does no one know?
> It's like I'm losing my mind.
> All afternoon,
> Doing every little chore,
> The thought of you stays bright.
> Sometimes I stand
> In the middle of the floor,
> Not going left,
> Not going right.
> I dim the lights
> And think about you,
> Spend sleepless nights
> To think about you.
> You said you loved me,
> Or were you just being kind!
> Or am I losing my mind?
> 
> 
> 
> 

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