Day 112: We Can't All Come and Go By Bubble

  
Trailer for the Orlando production of Wicked at the Bob Carr

I remember when I first saw the musical Wicked with my friend Lorelie in Chicago.  I bought the CD after hearing Kristin Chenoweth perform Popular during an AMC preshow at the movie theatre.  Other than the song, I didn't know much about the show.  Only that it  was the story of the Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's perspective...something I had never even considered.

We gobbled mexican food at Frontera Grill, then hurried over to the theatre; hunkering down in the second row of the balcony behind a family armed with candied nuts and Twizzler wrappers. Despite the scrunching of plastic and rustling of paper, the show was good (with a capital "G"); for weeks afterwards I twirled and sang around the house, regretting my decision to leave music school just two years short of graduation.

The performances were amazing; even better were the themes. Central to the story is a question rasied by Glinda: "Are people born Wicked? Or do they have Wickedness thrust upon them?"  If you haven't seen the show--don't worry--I won't spoil it for you.  I will say, however, that after watching it twice, listening to the CD more than 1,000 times, and living a very good and very bad 40-year existence,  things aren't always what they seem.

Which got me thinking...would the message of Wicked change...viewed through older eyes or eyes of illness?

I was hoping to grab on to some deep metaphor that would make coping with disease easier, or make pain seem less important, or find some inspirational way to map Lyme onto the witch (after all, she is green).  Instead, despite an amazing YouTube performance of Defying Gravity, I think mainly the same two things:  1) Man, that's really good.  2) I miss music.

Bottom line?  It's true, as Glinda points out, "It's dreadful, it is, to have a house fall on you..."  But monkeys, twisters, and gravity are unavoidable. So, you might as well rise above it, defy it, and fly.

Altered Today: Thoughts about how I will view myself and this period of my life in the future.  "Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader? It's all in which label is able to persist." --The Wizard

Comments

[Lorelie]

I am sending you an email right now. Heading to the show tonight and thinking of you. Thanks for this post!