I Was Sobbing Before I Even Knew Why

Last night I watched the filmed Broadway performance of "Merrily We Roll Along." Typical of a Sondheim show, it's smart, stylish, and cerebral. But by the time I reached the final scene, I was sobbing before I even knew why. The heart was beating behind the brains of the show the whole time. The aspiration, potential, and enthusiasm that the three characters saw in themselves and in each other was moving, and to know that would all dissipate over time was heartbreaking.

This morning I re-read the opening scene of Michèle Gerber Klein's "Surreal" - the biography of Gala Dalí. It focuses on a Hollywood-style party that the Dalís hosted in 1941 at the Del Monte Hotel in Pebble Beach, California. It was the Dalis' "coming-out" event - designed to embed them amongst the high society crowd following their escape to the US during World War II. Described as a performance within an installation, Hollywood types and East Coast millionaires alike dined in a ballroom that was decorated like a magical Forest Grotto. Gala held pride of place reclined in a red satin and silk bed at the head of the table, nursing a five-month-old lion cub in her arms.

As I work to move from research to writing, I'm looking to find a scene that could deserve a song. This event feels like it has the right energy for a musical number. Sondheim built songs around parties in Merrily, in Company and in Sunday in the Park. It's a good mechanism to introduce a number of characters in a short amount of time, each of them can deliver some information, and we quickly learn a lot about the characters as we watch them interact.

When I didn't know where to take that line of inquiry any further, I decided to return to "Save the Cat!" I haven't settled on a log line for this show. Author Blake Snyder promises that writing the rest of the show is much easier once you've established a strong log line, and easier would be nice.

I experimented with reverse-engineering potential log lines for Merrily We Roll Along:

• Dreaming of success brought three artists together. Achieving it tore them apart.
• Yearning for something intangible can give folks a common mission or purpose, but only as they begin to achieve it do they realize that they were looking for different things.
• Eager, starry-eyed artists sacrifice their ideals for a chance at success and discover the prize wasn't worth the cost.

Last night I was sobbing at the idea of passionate potential that fades into 'going through the motions' - the same fear I found myself exploring a few posts ago. The question of what happens when the initial heat of a new spark moves to a slower smoulder sits with me.

Perhaps the Dalí musical log line is:

• An artist has exaggerated his likeness and eccentric personality to the point where he has become his own most famous work of art and now finds himself trapped inside the frame he's built for himself.

The spark becomes the persona.
The persona becomes the frame.

I was sobbing because I already knew how the story ends.