The Road / Cormac McCarthy

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, don't you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
"To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong." Joseph Chilton Pearce

"If you press me to tell why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed,
except by answering: Because it was he, because it was I."
Michel de Montaigne, "Of Friendship"

Saturday, October 23, 2010

I'm Not Afraid of Anything by Jason Robert Brown

The creation of a character's history:

Jennie and Katie and daddy and mama. Me. David.

The question I have to keep asking myself while singing this song is, What am I afraid of? Because Jennie's afraid of water, Katie's afraid of darkness, daddy's afraid of babies, mama's afraid of crying. And David, well, he's afraid of me. (Why is David afraid of me? Why does he have to be afraid of love?) Perhaps I am afraid of love. Perhaps I am afraid of David being afraid to love me. There is a volta in this song; it is the "intense and tight" part that the music becomes an undercurrent of the A2 chord, drumming a million heartbeats in syncopation. And afterwards I keep singing, David loves me, David loves me, David loves me. Do I love David?

By the end of the song, after the volta, why, of course: yes. I am not afraid of anything or anyone because I love David more than he fears loving me. In the end, love prevails.

But going back to my parenthetical questions about David, I want to ask, why are we afraid of love? Are we not brave enough?

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H."

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