Order, Design, Composition, Tension, Balance, Harmony

"Pretty isn't beautiful

Pretty is what changes

What the eye arranges

Is what is beautiful"

Lil’ Jake, the Hip Hop artist & The Husband’s design partner, suggested a viewing of Sondheim’s Sunday In The Park With George on DVD. An interesting proposition with the 3 of us working so much & keeping different hours. The Boys’ Fort duo finish at the shop around 7:30pm, just in time for me to go to bed at 8pm (I get up at 4am).

I resisted at first, but Lil’Jake needed the distraction, I gave in & at 8pm, we settled in to watch the Broadway cast in the 1985 Pulitzer prize winning musical. I had never seen the show in any production, but I knew the score. The Husband would repeatedly listen to the original cast album in the mid-1980s & I always enjoyed it also. At some point I became aware that act one’s Finishing The Hat moved him deeply & was one of his favorite songs.

Sondheim is criticized as too cerebral & clever, & cynical. However, I am very moved by Sunday In The Park With George. There is a significance, sophistication & soul to this musical that goes well beyond what I expected.

The story, a work of fiction, centers around the life of the painter Georges Seurat & his most famous work- A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. But, it's not about the painter, or even about the painting. The subject is art. The theme is the art of making art & the search for significance & meaning in life. It's about connecting the dots to the world around you. It's about living life fully & not giving into the mediocre, standing back from the dots that make up our lives & seeing how it all fits together, allowing the perspective to be placed into the proper place.

This DVD has frozen in time, the heartbreakingly young Mandy Patinkin & Bernadette Peters in a perfect alignment of the Broadway stars. I can’t help but feel that all the artists involved: director & book writer-James Lapine, Stephen Sondheim, orchestrator/musical director Jonathan Tunick, & the company of actors were at the very apex of their considerable talents

Bernadette Peters & Mandy Patinkin have dazzled me in their stage, film & TV work. I have been fortunate enough to have seen them live on stage in other roles, but this may be their very best work. Because live theatre is so ephemeral, great performances can been lost. Having a well filmed record of this musical makes me feel better about have missed the chance to have experienced it live in 1984. Someone find a new project for Patinkin! Here, he is a marvel, singing the songs with stunning styling & with a rare range of expression.

Sondheim's score is a thing of greatness & genius. Each song is remarkable, held with the highest possible craft & talent. There is also the brilliance of his usual orchestrator- Tunick’s arrangements of the pointillist score. The effect of the smart, sharp sparkling songs & performances, & the astonishing arrangements is absolutely breathtaking.

Someone once was of the opinion that I fell in love with The Husband because he was beautiful. Beautiful he still is.  But,this is not true, no matter what you may have heard. I fell for him because he created art. Beautiful & unsettling art.

Dot, the Bernadette Peter’s character, is George’s model & lover. Dot exists only for her relationship to George & his art. In the opening song, she says that she finds George physically attractive but the thing she loves most is his painting, his talent. For me, profund talent can be an extreme aphrodesiac. What Dot loves most is the thing that will forever keep them apart. She wants to be the center of his universe, yet she can never be because his art will always come before her. She can only come close when she is the subject of his work.

Order, design, composition, tension, balance, harmony…these words also apply to my life. Note to self: in 2012, learn to infuse what is left of your life with an attention to design, with a healthy tension, with a more thoughtful composition, with genuine balance, with light & harmony.

"Anything you do,

Let it come from you.

Then it will be new.

Give us more to see..."