For Congregation Ner Shalom, Friday, Nov. 26, 2021.
Tonight I’m going to tell you all about one of my earliest gay experiences.
It was in high school. A friend and I met up privately, got in the car, and went downtown to see a performance of “Side by Side by Sondheim.” The lights dropped and there were suddenly three singers on stage, along with the evening’s host, Cyril Richard, if you remember him, who died soon after that performance and was replaced by Shari Lewis and Lambchop who, in my second time seeing it, stole the show, performing “Little Lamb” from Gypsy, in a pinspot on a black stage.
Before the near coming-out experience of that show, I’d only caught bits and pieces of Stephen Sondheim. I’d heard Judy Collins singing “Send in the Clowns.” I’d seen West Side Story. But I already sensed that there was something in Sondheim’s outlook, something in his worldliness and cleverness that was or was going to be important to me; that in some way was about me. So I went.
After the show I bought the album. And then listened to it incessantly until I knew every word, until I could sing the patter from “Not Getting Married” or “Another Hundred People” as fast as anyone. I played the sheet music on piano until I could get through most of the songs. I don’t know if all of that obsessing over the words and melodies of Sondheim was a separate gay act or a long, langourous continuation of the first.
And from that point, Sondheim was more or less in my life for good. Anna Belle Kaufman and I realized just last week that we both saw the same London production of Sweeney Todd in the summer of 1980. And in the early 2000s the Kinsey Sicks recorded a parody of one of his songs. We don’t know if he ever heard it, but we counted ourselves lucky not having gotten sued.
I’m sure many people in the room have their own Sondheim stories. Favorite songs or shows that you’ve seen or been in. So many of his words have been part of the culture, especially his earliest ones. Raise your hand now if you’ve ever said, “Everything’s coming up roses.” Leave your hand up if you’ve ever added “and daffodils.” And Sondheim’s melodies have become part of the soundtrack of our lives. At least the easy melodies.
Because he mostly liked to write complicated. Complicated ideas and feelings wrapped up in complicated internal rhyme sitting on what is often unsingable music. And sometimes that stuff can leave us cold.
But sometimes it speaks to us. His urban, urbane remove isn’t just snobbiness. There’s something gay in it – this vantagepoint of being an observer of the action as much or more than a participant in it. While written as a straight character, Bobby, the protagonist of “Company”, represented the experience of so many gay men of the era, alone amongst their straight couple friends, always fixed up, never destined for easy publicly sanctioned love. Men for whom heteronormative marriage was never a natural alternative.
That sense of “in it but not of it” is not just a gay vantagepoint in 20th Century art, but a Jewish vantagepoint also. American Ashkenazi Jews of the mid-20th Century, the children or grandchildren of immigrants, were also involved in a struggle to assimilate into a culture that wasn’t theirs. And they often had a dramatic influence on that culture, creating much of what we imagine as American! But still, maybe because of that authorship, having a burdensome awareness of the artificiality of American culture. The arbitrariness of naturalness. So we see in his writing that deep Jewish longing to let go and belong, even while questioning the authenticity of the thing we want to belong to.
That overly intellectual reserve sometimes gets read as cynical. So much of Sondheim sounds cynical at first blush. But that tone often masks real feelings, real struggles, pain, longing, and insight. So much insight:
From “Into the Woods” we learn not to trust easy happy endings, because Act II is always coming.
From “Follies” we learn that nonetheless love is possible and can be articulated, even late in the game.
From “Sweeney Todd” we learn to consider the contents of what we consume.
From “West Side Story” we learn that there is a place for us. Somewhere a place for us.
From “Company” we learn that relationships don’t have to fit a mold; we can be just as warm, just as cozy, side by side by side.
From “Anyone Can Whistle” we lean into what it is like to feel out of step, when what is natural to others feels unnatural to us. Or on a purely spiritual level, what it is like to live so alone in these disconnected bodies, when we know, when we sense, that we come from such a great connected Oneness. The title song contains medicine for it – the medicine of reaching out beyond one’s own boundaries, asking for help and witnessing and companionship. Asking to be called. The song is part lament and part prayer, a prayer for all of us gay or Jewish or over-thinky people imprisoned in the safe refuge of our heads. It is a prayer that we might give up the fight and crack open at last.
Anyone can whistle, that’s what they say. Easy.
Anyone can whistle any old day. Easy.
It’s oh so simple: Relax! Let go! Let fly!
So someone tell me why can’t I.
I can dance a tango. I can read Greek. Easy.
I can slay a dragon any old week. Easy.
What’s hard is simple. What’s natural comes hard.
Maybe if you show me how to let go.
Lower my guard.
Learn to be free
Maybe if you whistle, whistle for me.