October 13, 2006

• The Daily News 1  Friday. 2  No matter how hard I try, I still just love Fridays. 3  Only on a Friday would I be reading an article about some knucklehead in Concord who, for whatever reason, got angered at some bikers and decided to drive right at them wielding a pool cue. He pulled up, got out of his car to do some lunatic thing or other, and instantly got hit by his own car, which he had left in reverse. It knocked him right into traffic, but fortunatly some of the bikers pulled him away, and he was okay. For the record, his name was Richard Brooks, and big Dick, really man, you gotta do somethingabout those anger-management issues. It isn't those bikers' faults that you hate your dad. True story. 4  Right after having written that last item, the television blasted the famous War song, Why Can't We Be Friends, a perfect segue and dovetail to the very Daily News. Fun coincidence. Read on. 5  I love how things like that happen all the time. 6  Last night, for example, I was flying around town with the wonderful YB student Drama directors, and someone pulled out this old CD I had made called H's mix, a lovely little bit of tunes I used to listen to in the Spring of '05. It is essentially songs that had defined the many wonderful hours I had spent with the Class of '05, and included a great segue (that's TWICE now!) from a live version of Fleetwood Mac's Landslide to a subtle delay, and then on to the quiet, lilting piano intro to Elton John's Your Song, which soon became the poetic anthem of all of us. Lovely song, soulful and meaningful.  7  I hadn't listened to it in quite a while, and it was a nice moment in the TOONDRA. Cam was there, and although she is Class of '07, there always has been a nice link between those two classes. Cam remembered all the lovely moments, and the piano swirled, and the song, as ever, made us all smile. Trami, Ricardo, and Cam in                           It's Our Town, Too from A Love Letter, Spring, '05                                           8  I added a tidbit of fun to Cam, who had been in my official last show, A Love Letter. I told her the story of how the music that Maggie had set the scene she was in, It's Our Town, Too used the exact same music I had used in my second show ever, Our Town, and that the set-up scene was exactly the same way I had opened Our Town all those years ago. 9  I told her that the music sounded instrumentally similar to Your Song because it was a rare rock instrumental that Elton John had made for a film called Friends, and that it was recorded at almost the same exact time Your Song was first released. I wanted it in A Love Letterbecause I had planted a million little things from my entire directing career into that show. 10  I went on to tell her that for A Love Letter, I wanted that exact piece but that it was never made  into a CD.  I literally had to buy it at a used record store, record it at my parents' house on their old stereo,  take the tape to Maggie, who  turned it into a CD, the selfsame CD that  played on the sound master which was then mixed  brilliantly by Sparky. When I listened to it, I was amazed at the similarities of the tune to Your Song, especially the piano work. 11 So watching as Maggie set the scene up always brought me back to my first ever artistic success, and to my early days of directing with utmost delicacy and care. Our Town was a masterpiece at the time, well ahead of its time for a high school. It featured a tremendously complex use of sound effects, crickets, and subtle music to make a play into a lilting poem. And it worked, one of the greatest moments in my directing career. I felt it was a masterpiece of theatre. Still do.  12  Masterpiece. Self declared. 13  Audiences were moved by the show, and it was a triumphant moment in my young directing career. And in my last real show, A Love Letter, it worked with yet new soul: the Your Song connection to all of it. 14  In many ways, that moment in A Love Letter was just a simple sort of letter to myself celebrating all the years I had spent directing. It was never intended as anything but a meaningful artistic gift, much the same as a painter feels towards his or her best painting, or a poet feels about a favorite poem. It probably sounds a bit indulgent to a reader, but secretly, that was what was happening. I was expressing myself artistically I imagine. It worked for me, and for me alone. 15  Anyway, as we continued our drive in the TOONDRA the other day, Your Song kept playing, and the story was shared with Cam, and just as it ended, we went past a street called Shaffer. Listen: 16  When I did Our Town so many years ago, it was my first show that had coincidences mounted on coincidences, and just two nights ago, Your Song played right after Landslide, and soon my thoughts raced back to Our Town, and then to '05. Just as the song ended, we flew past a street called Shaffer. 17  Cam had played Emily in It's Our Town, Too. Back in my second show, my very beautiful Our Town, a girl named Marcy Shaffer played Emily Webb. Shaffer. Spelled just like the sign we flew past in the TOONDRA as Your Song came to it's lovely ending. 18  It's a little bit funny. 19  As I stated, there were several wonderfully amazing coincidences in Our Town, the first series in a career of coincidences that I now see as what Carl Jung called synchronicity, and which is simply miracles upon miracles that happen all around us. 20  I'll leave it at that. Those who have experienced some of those miracles will get it, everyone else will probably blow it off, or just shake their heads about why I always think those sorts of things are such big deals. 21  To me it's proof that something's out there, you know? 22  Maybe it's just my sanity that's out there. 23  But I can't really explain those things. You either get it or you don't. 24  But no matter how you look at it, it's always a little bit funny. 25  You may go now, in peace. Have a lovley weekend.                                            finis. ~H~       http://www.xanga.com/bharrington

  
   

  
  
  
  
  
   

  
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
   

       
  
  
  

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