Starting up that Monday engine
Oh, hi friends!
Today you can get up and change your whole life.
Isn’t that marvelous? Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that scary?
Isn't that…possible?
Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash
From Stephen Sondheim: “I would like to quote Oscar [Hammerstein II] on this subject, in a marvelous introduction to a book of his called Lyrics:
‘There is in all art a fine balance between the benefits of confinement and the benefits of freedom. An artist who is too fond of freedom is likely to be obscure in his expression.’
So what you want is something specific, but not too specific.”
***
I stole this from an old issue of Dramatists Guild Quarterly. Old, like, it’s from Autumn 1971. I bought it at The Strand for a dollar because Sondheim lays out the principles of his songwriting (this came decades before he wrote Finishing the Hat). Inspiration is cheap, and everywhere!
Anyway, this idea is an important one. How confined must an artist be to create? And, also, how free? And how does confinement—constraints, really—change what is created?
If someone says “Tell me a story,” you can get stuck. Which story? But if someone says, “Tell me a story about the best breakfast you’ve ever had in your life,” images might come to your mind, and that might conjure images in their mind. The specifics, as they say, become universal.
Oh, look! The creator of This Is Us made a new movie (his latest was Crazy, Stupid, Love). It’s called Life Itself and it stars Oscar Isaac and comes out in September and it looks like everything I could ever want in a film. What I appreciate most about Dan Fogelman’s work is that characters are allowed to feel—and that’s what makes us, as viewers, feel, too. Combined with his interlocking narratives and the idea that everything and everyone is connected…well…SAVE ME A SEAT, I’LL BE THERE.
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara