Taking Yourself Seriously

First of all, the Queen's song is scored. I need to go through it as a pianist and make sure each of the parts are functionally playable – I suspect they are, since I play them as I compose them, but every time I play through an entire accompaniment from beginning to end (instead of whichever measure I am working on at the time) I generally find something awkward or unwieldy that could be smoothed or simplified (rather like this opening paragraph) – and then I need to go through and put in all of the articulation markings and the dynamics and what have you, and the footnotes explaining the dramaturgical purpose of specific passages.

You might be all well, if it's strong enough dramatically it doesn't need an explanatory note, but I originally designed MELISANDE as something that could be produced by our local student theater group, which means that I might be working with people who might never have considered the idea that an accompaniment could both support and convey information.

(And, if we're honest about it, most accompaniments only support.)

Second of all, I've gotten to the point at which I am recognizing the patterns I am most likely to replicate, which means that a careful listener is likely to recognize them too, which means that it's time to bring in some new ideas, and fast – and in terms of storytelling this is perfect, because we're about to have the sixteen-year-time-jump that takes us from Melisande's birth to her sixteenth birthday.

Which means I get to think about how music might have changed, in this kingdom, in the past sixteen years.

You might be all well, is it music that has to have changed, or just the people who are creating the music, like, should I be focusing on some type of harmonic progression or is it enough to show how the various characters may have progressed, etc. etc. etc. and I don't know the answer yet. I know it's a problem I want to dig into, starting by asking myself how music generally changes in a sixteen-year-period (which is a ridiculous, unspecific question, as the King would note) or maybe looking at how music changed between 1885 and 1901.

But I'm secretly most interested in how music has changed in the past sixteen years – literally, since 2008 – in part because our culture has experienced a period of artistic staticity that might have something to do with what's going on in Melisande's story (her hair does not grow, she is taught not to want her hair to grow, she does not grow).

You might be all no, wait, how can you say it's been static, we had all of YouTube, we had all of TikTok, we didn't even have smartphones or streaming media or anything like that, why would music in 2008 be functionally identical to music in 2024, so let's take a look:

The Best Song of 2008 (according to the Grammy Awards, which is basically a who-cares metric but we need one to start us off) was Amy Winehouse's "Rehab."

The Best Song of 2024 was Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made For?"

The biggest difference between these two songs is that I know "Rehab" because I was still listening to the radio in 2008, and I have no idea what "What Was I Made For?" sounds like.

Wait, it's from the Barbie movie? I saw that. Still don't remember the song, though.

I mean, it's not particularly memorable. I'm listening to it right now and it is meant to evoke a vibe, as the kids say. "I don't know how to feel but I wanna try/I don't know how to feel but someday I might" is interesting. Not musically, and not even lyrically, but as a statement of what people want to think right now.

"I think I forgot how to be happy. Something I'm not, but something I can be. Something I wait for. Something I'm made for."

PUT A GIGANTIC HONKING PIN IN THAT (also if there are pins that honk, I want one) BECAUSE THIS IS ACTUALLY WHAT I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT THIS AFTERNOON.

But first, let's all sing "Rehab" together because I know you still can:

"They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no, no."

(Larry and I are watching the last season of My Brilliant Friend on HBO and I am reading the Ferrante tetralogy for the third time and there's a comparison to be made here, "They tried to make me but I said no" as Lila and "Something I wait for, something I'm made for" as Lenù, but it seems like an oversimplification.)

Since I'm writing a musical, we might as well take a look at the Best Musical of 2008 (according to the Tony Awards) which was IN THE HEIGHTS, and the Best Musical of 2024 which was THE OUTSIDERS, once again a musical that I know every word of and a musical I know no words of, off we go to find out how Ponyboy stays golden this time:

Well, the opening numbers are virtually the same. IN THE HEIGHTS is more complex and therefore more interesting – not to mention that Usnavi is extremely dynamic while Ponyboy is relatively static – but they're both about these boys explaining the worlds in which they live and their hopes of escaping them.

The finales are also relatively identical. Usnavi is going to stay and make the neighborhood better and tell the stories of the people he knows and loves, and Ponyboy is staying at least for now (the lyrics imply that he might be leaving soon, I need to get a copy of the script) and telling the stories of the people around him.

I mean, it is an extremely popular story structure.

But let's get back to THAT PIN, THE ONE THAT HONKS, and see if I can fit another idea on the end of it.

Soooooooooooo I happened to find a part of the internet that I wasn't specifically looking for but seems like the most important thing I could have found, and this part of the internet is called Taking Children Seriously.

There are three basic theses of the Taking Children Seriously movement, as follows:

1. Parents (and teachers and etc.) should not coerce children into doing things.
2. Children should be allowed to pursue their own interests and desires, including but not limited to what to study, what to eat, when to go to bed, and when/how often to play video games, watch television, chat with their friends online, and engage in other so-called "unproductive" or "unhealthy" activities.
3. If parents and children find themselves in conflict, the goal is neither coercion nor compromise but the development of a solution that is not only acceptable but preferential to both parties. (In other words, this is the idea that makes you eliminate the previous idea as no longer worthy of contention.)

I do not have children. I have a few piano students, and this has already affected the way I work with them.

More importantly, it has fundamentally changed the way I work with me.

There should be a section in Taking Children Seriously titled Taking Yourself Seriously, and it could be summed up in a single point:

1. If you do not wholeheartedly pursue your own interests and desires, including but not limited to what to study, what to eat, when to go to bed, and when/how often to engage in so-called "unproductive" or "unhealthy" activities, you will be absolutely incapable of allowing anyone else to do the same.

No, wait, I need a second point:

2. Also you'll be happier if you do this, way way way way way way way happier, ask me how I know.

Larry and I had been talking about and around this idea for years, without knowing precisely what name to give it. We dismissed "selfishness," because that isn't quite right. Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander's book The Art of Possibility came a little closer, as did Larry's suggestion that we ought to remove anything that felt burdensome or exhausting instead of energizing.

But it's a lot easier to passively remove what you don't want – sending a book back to the library instead of finishing it, for example – than to actively pursue what you do want.

This is the kind of thing that will make you say WHAT ABOUT JOBS THOUGH, DON'T YOU HAVE TO HAVE A JOB, AND ALSO DON'T YOU HAVE TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK AND PRACTICE THE PIANO AND CLEAN THE HOUSE AND ALL THE REST OF IT?????

I can answer that question in a single phrase:

Work is not burdensome when it leads to abundance.

I built my freelance writing career not just because I was good at it, but also because I knew that I could increase my income better than I could at a traditional job while working fewer hours every year. This gave me an abundant life that I loved, and so I was very happy to write about updates to the United MileagePlus system or whatever my assignments were that week. In fact, I specifically became the best at writing about the United MileagePlus system because I loved the possibilities this work offered me.

Prior to that, I worked as an executive assistant and, for a while, became the best at what I did (I was the EA to the Vice President of the organization, then the President, then the Vice President and President simultaneously) because the life I had while working that job was the most abundant life I had yet experienced. I had vacation days! Multiple fashionable outfits! The opportunity to go to a bar and buy a cocktail now and then!

Prior to that I had a series of dismal hourly jobs, the less said about any of them the better, and none of them offered anything like abundance so they all felt like tremendous burdens.

Same goes for kids. Same goes for anybody. If you give a kid a bunch of household tasks to complete in exchange for an allowance, and then tell them that they have to put 33% in savings and 33% in charity and even the 34% they are allowed to keep can only be spent on items you personally approve, it's no wonder kids look on all of that nonsense as chores.

(I wrote a personal finance essay back in the Billfold days about how most parents don't really want to teach kids about money; instead, they want to limit their children's purchasing power.)

And right now our society is not set up to offer many people abundance, which could be more specifically defined as the opportunity to wholeheartedly pursue what they want. Or maybe it is, or maybe it could be, but the people living abundant lives are off living them and the rest of us are online singing "I think I forgot how to be happy. Something I'm not, but something I can be. Something I wait for. Something I'm made for."

AND

THAT

IS

WHY

I

AM

WRITING

MELISANDE.

❤️

(p.s. no it isn't)

(not really)

(sort-of-maybe)

(but I'm really writing MELISANDE because I love musical theater more than anything else)

(always have)

(here is a page from my childhood diaries)