Love and Disillusionment

The music I'm listening to this week at work is the soundtrack from Stephen Sondheim's Company. The cabaret group I'm involved with is going to perform several songs from this show next year, so I'm trying to get it in my ear. I will tell you that Getting Married Today is pianistically brutal and musically awkward. What fiend writes in G-flat major?! Oh yeah, Sondheim does.

Company was first staged in 1970. The show's central character is Bobby, a thirty-something bachelor surrounded by five couples who are his best friends but in varying states of happiness and unhappiness with their respective marriages. One of my favorite scenes is "Barcelona", where he begs the one-night stand stewardess (yes, that's what we called them then) — whom he calls "June" although her name is "April" — not to leave for Barcelona. She succumbs to his pleas, only to realize they were merely pro forma.

But the song that caught my ear today and seemed appropriate for quoting here is "Being Alive".

Someone to hold you too close
Someone to hurt you too deep
Someone to sit in your chair
And ruin your sleep
And make you aware of being alive

Someone to need you too much
Someone to know you too well
Someone to pull you up short
And put you through hell
And give you support for being alive-being alive
Make me alive, make me confused
Mock me with praise, let me be used
Vary my days, but alone is alone, not alive!

Somebody hold me too close
Somebody force me to care
Somebody make me come through
I'll always be there
As frightened as you of being alive,
Being alive, being alive!

Someone you have to let in
Someone whose feelings you spare
Someone who, like it or not
Will want you to share a little, a lot of being alive
Make me alive, make me confused
Mock me with praise, let me be used
Vary my days, but alone is alone, not alive!

Somebody crowd me with love
Somebody force me to care
Somebody make me come through
I'll always be there
As frightened as you to help us survive,
Being alive, being alive, being alive, being alive

For me, being in a relationship that I know we are both committed to is being alive. The occasional pain inherent in two people living together and sharing a life would be worth it to me to have someone in my life, to not be alone. I miss having someone who knows me too well, who pulls me up short, who isn't afraid to confront me and cajole me and love me.

Alone is alone.

<Sidebar to the PianoLady on>
Looks like a Company revival opens in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre (right around the corner from our Marriott) on November 29th. If it's still running next October, this may need to be one of our shows.
<Sidebar off>