i picked up my ticket to Godspell today. it was a spontaneous decision to buy it when i saw a tv commercial promoting the new production. but i had recently remembered how much i liked that show, and think it is even better than Jesus Christ Superstar in some ways. that got me to remembering the guy who insisted that “Too Much Heaven On Their Minds”, Judas’ jeremiad that opens “Superstar”, is the single greatest song ever written for Broadway. i don’t know if i’d commit wholly to that sentiment but i don’t disagree, either. it is a great song.
my sister was part of a production of Godspell when she was in high school and i in grade school. it may be the first stage musical i ever knew. i always liked it, and if it’s considerably more low-key than Superstar then maybe my feelings are correct: Superstar was the “Star Wars” of the Broadway musical. it was the first of the mega-shows, and the rock and roll-influenced soundtracks which are common today. by comparison Star Wars was the first special-effects blockbuster which, if it looks fairly timid by today’s standards, changed Hollywood for generations. it was Sylverster Stallone who said that if Rocky had come out a year after Star Wars then it would have failed. it would have been considered an art film, and would have played at few large theaters.
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while in midtown i had a couple of interesting encounters. the first involved the impeccably dressed old man who i think is insane. quietly insane. minding-his-own-business-insane. but still, insane. i noticed him a year or so ago. he was using a payphone, and scribbling notes onto a note pad with a pencil. i first saw this and thought nothing much of it, except to notice that someone was using a payphone. i notice these things. but then i thought about it. without drawing on any unkind stereotypes i can reasonably allow that this gentleman did not look like a typical payphone user of the 21st century. i imagined him a sales person, or even a door-to-door character like a character out of Glengerry Glen Ross. maybe his skills and abilities to work the phones remained, at his age, adequate for his line of work. it was kind of neat to see someone at work sticking to old school techniques of payphones and hand-written notes.
then i realized: it couldn’t be. it didn’t make sense.
one time i saw him working his favorite payphone. after he hung up and walked over to 5th Avenue i picked up the phone he had just been using. it did not work. no dial tone, no humming noise, no nothing. yet while i saw him using that phone he had behaved as if making some kind of contact, maybe setting up an appointment or closing a deal. the grist and grizzle of his demeanor made me think he was on the move, on the make, with places to go and people to see and hearts to break.
i followed him down 5th Avenue, studying his gestures and tics, noting the nervous manner in which he extended his right thumb into a semi-circle and nervously scratched the inside of him palm with his overly-lengthy index-fingernail. he looked around, his head held high and his sights set far. he is very tall, and most times i see him he is well-groomed and even debonnaire.
today i saw him again, in a place where i’d never seen him before. he looked a little haggard, but i think he got caught unprepared for the rainy weather (as did i).
today i got as close as i’ve been to his notepad. this is where he scribbles notes in pencil. i see him at that payphone and at other places, consulting his notepad and either scribbling new notes or crossing out earlier thoughts.
i was afraid to get too close, but i got closer to the man then ever before. he sat at a table in a midtown public space. he sat as if at leisure, his right leg crossed on his left knee. he seemed to be assaying the crowd of people at the public space. he stroked his chin and looked around, consulting his papers and scribbling new notes betwixt crossing out notes he’d written earlier. i saw the papers. i saw them not from as closely as i would have liked to be able to be certain of what i am about to say, but i saw these papers from close enough that i believe they were covered with gibberish. i could not see a single intelligible word or letter on the page at which he looked the first time i passed him. the second time i passed him i saw him writing something on to that page. the third time i passed him i saw him studying a completely blank page. he set his piercing gaze upon that empty page for the 6 or 7 seconds that i stood behind him, looking over his shoulder.
i had a dismal flashback to something my sister told me about our mother: years after mother retired she was still waking up at all hours and getting dressed to go to work. she might wake at 4am and race downstairs to get her work clothes from the laundry room. she sometimes made it as far as getting into the car and preparing to go to the office before either my sister or brother-in-law were awoken by the activity and came downstairs to stop her.
i don’t know if the man i have been seeing in midtown was always insane, or if he once held a job through which he now goes through the motions, remembering his glory days by re-enacting them in the same classy business suit he wore back in the day.
the more i see him, though, the more certain i am that he is insane. quietly insane.
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the other interesting encounter i had today was outside the Paramount Building on Broadway @ 50th Street. i was trying to find the theater wher Godspell is playing, for to pick up that aforementioned ticket. as it turned out the theater which claims to be on Broadway is much closer to 8th Avenue, but within a building the street address of which is on Broadway.
while looking about for the Theater On the Round (i think that’s what it’s called) i heard a strange splat sound. i looked down and saw that someone had dropped a notebook. i was quickly able to tell who had dropped it. i saw the person who dropped it descend down some stairs into the sub-terranean arcade area in from of the Paramount Building. the person may have been headed to the subway.
i picked up the notebook and nearly got intercepted by someone who either didn’t care or didn’t notice that someone had dropped the notebook, and that i had picked it up, and that i was attempting to return it to the person who dropped it.
i descended the stairs in slow pursuit of the person who dropped the notebook. i did not want to tap the person on the shoulder (remembering a scary incident with a street-tough kid in the early 1990s). i semi-shouted “you dropped this.” the person seemed not to hear me, and with a heavy raincoat and hat and other rain-ready attire i could not, from 5 or 6 feet behind, determine if this was a man or a woman. once again i said “you dropped this.” still no response. i looked at the back of the raincoat, the hood covering the person’s head such that i had a brief fear that the person would turn around to look at me, revealing that the person was walking dead and only the cackling face of a jabbering human skull would respond to my entreaties.
then i saw that the perosn was carrying a purse. this gave me some ammunition to cut in half the uncertainty i had about how to address this person whose notebook i was trying to return. OK, it did not fully “cut in half” the uncertainty about the person’s gender. in fact it partly populated my hurried mind into forgetting about the cackling skull and imagining instead that after i said “ma’am, you dropped this” then the person might turn to me and reveal himself as a man who just happens to carry a purse.
i took the chance, barking out “ma’am, you dropped your notebook.” she immediately turned and responded, seeming to piece together the sensational detritus of the past few moments to remember that she had, in fact, dropped the notebook. “yes”, i imagined her thought process, “i heard that splat sound of the notebook falling to the sidewalk.”
the woman was much appreciative, thanking me twice and expressing her appreciation before i said “you’re walcome” and turned back up the stairs, in search of my Godspell ticket.
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i think the Godspell ticket was about $146. the theater is near the Winter Garden, where my mother and I saw “Cats” in either 1985 or 1986. We were here for my Juilliard audition, and decided to see Cats while we were here. We went to the Winter Garden for same-day tickets, and were told they cost something like $85 each – an ungodly sum for my mother in those days. She and I expressed alarm at the prices. a fur-coat-clad woman standing nearby saw our response and beamed, smiling like a woman after her first orgasm. directly to me she said “Welcome to New York!”