Heart and Music

Last night I was home alone. I've been feeling pretty distracted and down lately for a number of reasons, and although I generally look on the bright side and believe in the positive, I've had a hard time trying to shake it off this week. Trying to smile. 

I express myself and work through things in a few different ways, whether it's writing every single thought - rational or not - down on a legal pad until I'm all written out, or being incredibly hard on myself and rationalizing myself out of every feeling or thought that I have in order to get through it. But, to continue the train of thought from my last post, the thing that I find the most cathartic has always been theatre, and especially music.

I sang my guts out last night. Because there's nothing like music to lift your heart. It can pull you up or take you to the depths and everything in between. It's gut-wrenching, it's truthful, and it helps me to breathe when everything feels like it's crashing down around me.

Just try and be apathetic when you're pouring yourself into a song. You can't do it. And it's not to say that the "best" music revolves solely around how much they can make you feel. Sometimes it's even more powerful when the character is experiencing a lack of feeling, since it resonates as truthful or ironic or tragic. So much of theatre is technique and physical placement, but I think that most of the time it takes more than that. Theatre engages your body and your heart and your breath, and you can tell immediately if someone is detached or disengaged. It incorporates every part of you. I love music that makes me feel devastated. And I don't really know how to explain it other than it makes me feel alive, and for that reason it gives me joy. 

My list of most cathartic, favourite musicals includes, but is not limited to:
 

JRB, Lippa, William Finn and Sondheim? Big surprise there. Sondheim writes more truth into two lines of a song than an entire book of philosophy could ever hope to do. Lippa cuts to the rawest, darkest part of you. Finn's psychological perspective is captivating. And no one analyses the nature of men and women and relationships like Jason Robert Brown. Each of them are truthful, even through the self-deception of their characters or their circumstances.

And They're Off, Giants in the Sky, No One is Alone, It Took Me a While, Run and Hide, We Do Not Belong Together...

Heart and music. Breathe.

-K