In Praise of Rabbit Holes and Stephen Sondheim

(A 10-minute read, if you don’t click the links. But, my friends,
I invite you to click away and tumble down the rabbit hole with me.)

Let me set the stage.

I had planned on using the Thanksgiving four-day weekend to tweak my finished manuscript. Mary, my central character, was giving me fits. She is the most challenging of my characters to write because her reality is bizarre and so very different from the others. And, from my own. It’s about color and movement, but more on that later. All you need to know is that I planned to dance with Mary for those few days and see if I could find a way to more artfully bring her world to life.

And then, it happened. Again. I got distracted. Swept down one rabbit hole after another. For forty-eight hours. An unintentional deep dive that, on the surface, looks like self-sabotage. But the circuitous can sometimes be the fortuitous. I usually keep these hyper-focused “experiences” private, but since this one has a significant connection to my challenge at hand, I thought you might like to see my process.

It All Started with tick, tick…BOOM!

I allowed myself a lovely Thanksgiving Day with friends before starting my editing for the weekend. And, that evening, I gave myself a little night cap—the new Netflix musical, tick, tick…BOOM!, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and starring Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson. This is the semi-autobiographical story of Larson before he wrote Rent, while he was riding wave after wave of failure.

One of Larson’s influences and life-lines (by way of a generous and encouraging message left on his phone after a failed pitch for the show Larson had been writing for eight years), was Stephen Sondheim. For the film, he was conjured by Bradley Whitford. It was a fitting tribute to Sondheim since he had encouraged not only Larson, but the film’s director, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and generations of young and talented Broadway up-and-comers.

Bradley Whitford as Stephen Sondheim in *tick, tick...BOOM!* (Sondheim in circle).

Whitford’s portrayal of the musical genius and his ability to capture Sondheim’s old-and-scruffy-but-it’s-not-about-my-looks demeanor was uncanny. I was moved by Larson’s story and Miranda’s honest and innovative film adaptation. The sprinkling of Sondheim stardust throughout the film put a sheen on a lovely and satisfying day.

I went to sleep appropriately grateful—for friends, a full stomach, left-over pumpkin pie for breakfast and for the artistry of theater and film to soften the ragged edges of reality. But I couldn’t get Sondheim out of my thoughts. I’ve always been haunted by his work, especially Sunday in the Park with George, and fell asleep with the image of Sondheim’s craggy face swirling around in my mind and his haunting Finishing the Hat as the soundtrack for my dreams.

I awoke the next day to the news that Stephen Sondheim had just died. He was 91, but it was still a shock. I had gone to sleep with his magic and woke up to the reality of life. I could not go on with my weekend as planned. I could not write. A supernova had exploded and left a gaping hole in the sky. The airwaves were full of his name, his music and an army of grateful performers singing his praises. It was as if the world had stopped and shined its spotlight on Sondheim. I didn’t fight it. I swallowed the potion and dove in.

Rabbit Hole #1 You’re not really dead until it’s in the papers.

I Googled him and read Sondheim’s obituary in the NY Times. “The theater’s most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century,” it shouted. Hyperbole for anyone else but him. I felt vaguely proud, as though I were reading about a beloved relative.

Sondheim’s obit reminded me of the wide range of shows he had written and the many awards he had garnered, leading me to scratchy recordings and poorly shot YouTube videos. I grieved with gusto. And then I remembered watching his 90th birthday celebration last year, presented on Zoom, like so much of our lives were during the shutdown. That led me to another rabbit hole.

Rabbit Hole #2 Stay, just a little bit longer.

I didn’t want to let go. I found and rewatched Take Me to the Word: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration. Performers from his many shows sang tributes to him with love and reverence. If you’re not up for the entire two hours, you must watch Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald singing Ladies Who Lunch.

Mandy Patinkin’s tribute from Sunday in the Park with George, my favorite of all Sondheim’s shows, sent me down yet another rabbit hole.

(Hang in there, all these rabbit holes are actually leading me somewhere!)

Mandy Patinkin as Georges Seurat in *Sunday in the Park with George*.
(photo by Martha Swope, Billy Rose Theater)

Rabbit Hole #3 For some of us, rabbit holes are the only way to get there.

I rewatched Sunday in the Park with George (iTunes rental) and once again reveled in one of its messages—creative minds exist on a slightly different plane. Their need to hyper-focus (on an image, a color, a word) comes at the expense of normal human interaction. Not better or worse than others, just different. I thought of my four-plus years researching an obscure 1921 labor battle in the hills of West Virginia, to get my story just right. When Mandy Patinkin sang Finishing the Hat, I nodded. Yes. There is no choice. I felt affirmed in my quixotic journey.

That insight alone would have been enough to warrant this distraction. Dayenu! But these rabbit holes were leading me to something even greater.

I wasn’t done with Sunday in the Park. I burrowed deeper.

Rabbit Hole #4 failure’s just a state of mind.

I deep-dived into the NY Times review of the original 1984 production of Sunday in the Park with George, with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. According to the review, this production broke the mold of the Broadway musical. It was about Georges Seurat, a French post-Impressionist artist of the 1800s and it brought to life on stage his painting, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” Seurat never sold a painting in his lifetime. But he didn’t let failure stop him, always putting his art above all else, and every relationship, “to get it right.” It wasn’t about winning. It was about doing. Then I remembered Sondheim’s obituary said his was rarely commercially successful. I thought about Jonathan Larson’s failures and Sondheim’s encouragement when he needed it most. This master of theater knew that failure was but a point in time, not a final destination, if you keep going.

Rabbit Hole #5 I kept going. And I found gold!

If you’re still with me, here’s where the magic happened. But it’s not magic, really. It’s me digging and digging and having faith that the journey leads to something. This time, discovery—a study guide of Sunday in the Park with George by dramaturg Katy Werlin. A treasure trove of data for the cast and production crew at Burning Coal Theater Company, Raleigh, NC in 2015.

And tucked inside these pages, a single paragraph with a brief reference to an obscure book: Grammaire des Arts de Dessin, by Charles Blanc, published in 1867. Werlin says, “In this book, Blanc merged developments in science with aesthetics, stating that colors obeyed consistent rules and that color theory could be taught similarly to music theory.” Blanc’s book influenced Seurat and the artists in his circle (Degas, Monet, and Pissarro).

This short passage stopped me in my tracks. Here’s why.

The trouble I’ve been having with my character Mary is color. She experiences her world through swirling auras emanating from people, animals, trees, etc., and brilliant kaleidoscopic designs with sounds and aromas that seep from walls and ceilings uncontrolled, like a pesky leak from an upstairs neighbor’s overflowing tub. She has other oddities, but it’s color that I grapple with. She flashed glimpses of her world for me to see but left me on my own to find the right words to help my readers see her world.

Early on, I had discovered a little book by P. Syme first published in 1814 that provided some guidance: Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours: Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy, and the Arts. A book that Charles Darwin took with him for his travels on HMS Beagle to describe the colors of the wonderous natural scenes and species he was observing. It provided lyrical descriptions, for sure, but came up short in helping me describe the frenetic play between colors that energized Mary’s world.

I sensed I was on to something with this new discovery. I located the book online, in French. Finally, I found a 2015 English translation and the online preview allowed me a peek inside. And I began to salivate. It spoke of colors: their vibrations; their true role; their sentiment and the affinity between them. Color as energy in motion. Seurat captured that with his pointillist style. Mary lives and breathes it.

The Other End of the Rabbit Hole

And so, my friends, having shimmied down numerous rabbit holes, and squeezed myself out the other end, I’m back where I started, with Mary. But now I have a 150-year-old book to help me reveal this most challenging character. My random and improvised deep dive of a weekend led me to a discovery I never could have orchestrated. Now, I just need to sit down and finish the hat, as Sondheim would say. Farewell, Stephen, dear agitator, creative spirit, muse for so many. Thank you for leading me on this most delicious journey.