West Side Story, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Broadway

Music was a part of my life for as long as I can remember, ever since my mother started blasting Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind, and Fire throughout our white suburban household. I started playing the clarinet when I was 9, and dabbled in the saxophone and piano for a while, too. For about 10 years, making music was my life, and I was pretty good at it. Memories flood back to me, clear as day, when I hear certain pieces of music: the Mozart clarinet concerto I played for a 10th grade solo festival; my ongoing obsession with Abbey Road; the angst I felt when I heard Fiona Apple's Tidal; and yes, the entire soundtrack of Rent, which I imagined as my future life story after my inevitable sojourn to the Lower East Side.

I had one of those moments today, when a few notes of West Side Story evoked a wave of memory. Not just of a specific time and place, but an old feeling that reminds me that music can tell stories like no other medium, that the rise and fall of simple melodic intervals can strike at the core of who we are. A bit melodramatic, a bit adolescent, yes, and that's precisely why these emotions are so potent: they make me feel something I felt when I thought I knew everything about the world, and when I was looking for profundity at every turn.

Hearing Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story was a formative musical experience for me. I didn't know that music could make you feel that way. It unleashed the music nerd in me. I was a chubby, effeminate 7th grader who played the clarinet and sung in the choir. It was in the stars, really; West Side Story hit me at the ideal time in my life. It appealed to my affinity for tragic, Shakespearean melodrama and soaring melodies. I got to see gorgeous movie stars pretend to sing these massive songs and dance-fight each other. It was perfect. Still is. All kidding aside, West Side Story has to be some of the greatest music ever written for American theatre, if not the absolute pinnacle. 

Take "Maria," for instance, Tony's ode to his brand-new lover. It's basically Tony just singing the name Maria over and over. So the lyrics are a bit precious. But who can argue with this melody? The tritone that begins the chorus of "Maria" is so unexpected; it's a foreboding interval, resolved immediately by rising a half-step to complete the name. To me, "Maria," and the whole score, announces that Broadway has left the sunny world of Oklahoma! and entered a new frontier of star-crossed lovers and urban violence, without sacrificing melodic grandeur.

The quintet, especially, quenched the young gay boy's thirst for high drama. It has been reiterated and parodied by Les Miserables and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, and it's obvious why this song is so influential. Bernstein and his lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, use the quintet to stoke the flames of the various plot threads that have been building through the first act: the Jets' and Sharks' mutual enmity, Maria and Tony's forbidden affair, and Anita's unenviable plight, stuck in the middle of warring gangs and her foolish-in-love friend. Each party is represented by a musical motif we've heard before, with each group's melodic lines building on top of each other to produce complex harmony and rhythm. If "Maria" and "Tonight" are the musical's most beautiful melodies, then the quintet is its most ambitious and inventive. 

Listen to the way each group takes up and alters the meaning of "Tonight": for the gangs, tonight represents the culmination of rising tension that will explode into violence. For Tony and Maria, tonight recapitulates their Romeo and Juliet balcony scene, but this time with sinister undertones. And for Anita, tonight is safe from the spectre of violence, when she can finally be alone with her man. This weird and volatile mix of violence and sex is part of what makes the quintet so powerful.   

Stay tuned to the blog, because it's just occurred to me why violence, aggression, sexuality, and a Broadway score would appeal to a gay 12-year-old.

I Heart Libraries

In honor of National Library Week and the recent resolution of the Toronto library workers strike, here are a few reasons why libraries are essential to a healthy, open society.

1. Because the library is one of the few remaining public spaces in North America that doesn't revolve around commerce. I grew up in the suburbs of Western New York, and our public square was the mall. Societies need spaces that encourage intellectual stimulation, and which are relatively free from consumer culture.

2. Because ideas must be accessible to all, free of charge. Survival of the fittest abides in too many aspects of our society, but access to ideas should not be one of them; if we truly believe in an equitable, democratic society, lifelong learning must be an option for everyone, regardless of socio-economic position. Every citizen deserves the right to discover The Communist Manifesto, Dickens, Morrison, the Oxford English Dictionary, and hell, even Atlas Shrugged, if that's what you're into.

3. Reading is fun!

4. The library is a great place to take your demon offspring when they get bored with Dora the Explorer. Kids are actually pretty responsive when an adult sits down and reads to them. Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak will always be the shit. And reading to your kids will make them smarter. (However, please station your kids far, far away from me.)

5. The library sure beats the noisy and crowded Eaton Centre and Yorkdale Mall. Check out the beautiful Runnymede library (2178 Bloor St. W.), housed in a preserved heritage building in Bloor West Village.

6. Free internet! You may have to wait until that one guy finishes looking at porn, but still. It's free.

7. The public library is a great place to study, because you don't have to buy a latte to justify sitting there all day. Libraries are there for people to use, for free, for as long as you want (or until the librarians kick you out). Also, librarians ain't no punks when it comes to chit-chat. You may not be able to control the volume in a Starbucks, but best believe your local librarian will not stand for excessive noise!

8. You can test-drive a book before you buy it; or better yet, don't buy it at all!

9. Libraries have those huge, 50-lb. dictionaries you've seen in movies. Why lug one all the way home from the vintage book shop when you can just use the library copy? Although the OED is available online, the print version is more interesting, and they won't charge you a subscription fee just to read it. (Maybe these reference books appeal only to me?)

10. If you're lucky, your local branch may have a delightfully bitchy librarian who warns, "The library is a wonderful resource; DO NOT abuse it." She's right.