Advice from a 98-year-old I know
Oh, hi friends!
Yesterday was my Grandpa’s 98th birthday. NINETY-EIGHT. It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around.
I gave him a call — “Today’s a day just like any other,” he said.
He asked what I was working on today. I told him about a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
“You’re a spring chicken,” he said. “You still got a lot of time to do things, so you can only make the best of it.”
Make the best of it.
I love the sound of that.
“[Abe Burrows] offers [Cole] Porter definitive wisdom about making musicals: ‘Doing a show is not unlike bringing up a child. The child develops a life of its own. The parents do their best but certain things remain immutable, and the child is what he is.’
Porter, a great appreciator, tells Burrows that he liked those words enough to paste them in his scrapbook.”
Found this Cole Porter feature in a recent New Yorker illuminating (thanks to Mr. Macdonald for sending). Because it’s not just musicals. The same could be said for projects of all stripes.
They develop a life of their own, and certain aspects remain immutable. You can try to change it, but sometimes you have to accept it for what it is — and that alone can be a revelation.
For our next assignment in turning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel into a musical, Ron Passaro and I are writing a ballad (for Joel!). Which means listening to gems like these — “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” by The Platters (original written by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach for the 1933 musical Roberta). I love works that have second and third and fourth lives. By the way, you have a favorite ‘50s-‘60s ballad, please send it my way!
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara