"Spring Awakening"

I recently went to the musical Spring Awakening at Krannert. It is a contemporary, rock musical set in Germany in the late 1800s. It is the story of a bunch of teenagers on the brink of adulthood and how they handle the transition. IT's a story of physical abuse, sexual abuse, love, sexuality, school, and death. Much like White Boy Shuffle, it starts out funny, and gets really dark but ultimately has a deep message to take away. The main theme of the show is the danger of ignorance embodied by a class of adults unwilling to spoil their children's innocence.

The show has two central plots and then a bunch of side stories. I'll start with the detours. One includes two boys who discover that while all the other boys fantasize about the mysterious opposite sex, they have feelings for the much more accessible boys. They have to figure out how to tell their crush and live with their different perspective. Even though they end up connecting, they struggle to figure out what to do with their feelings because being gay is nowhere near being on their radar they don't even know it is an option. Another story is that a girl was forced to leave the village in the play when she got pregnant. She joined a gypsy camp, out of fear and rebellion, but soon enough she wanted to come home and have a family. She couldn't though, too much shame. The other significant plots involve physical and sexual abuse of the girls in the show by their fathers.

The central plots involve the three main characters, Wendla Bergmann, Melchior Gabor, and Moritz Stiefel.

Moritz isn't a good student. He's barely getting by and unable to focus due to his mind lusting for things he knows nothing about. Melchior Gabor comes to the rescue. Melchior is a radical free-thinker. He's a star pupil yet a bother to his teachers who don't want his opinion but just for him to regurgitate their ideas. Melchior realizes the confines of what adults will tell him and looks elsewhere for answers. When Moritz asks him for help Melchior tells him all the things he's found out. Moritz is horrified.

Wendla Bergmann is obedient and kind but she wants to know more and her parents won't tell her --not even about how her sister got pregnant. She, Melchior, and Moritz were childhood friends but once they became teenagers and the boys were separated from the girls, they grew apart. Her world is so full of things she doesn't understand until she reconnects with Melchior. She's walking alone outside her village when she sees Melchior under a tree. Not unpredictably, they fall in love and Melchior has an internal battle about whether or not he can burden her with his knowledge. He thought knowing things would make him freer but it also alienates him from his peers.

Meanwhile, Moritz finds out that he has BARELY passed his classes by sneaking into the administrative office and looking at his grades. So he's happy that he's not going to fail out of school and Wendla and Melchior are happy because they actually  feel  something deep enough to affect them. The act is almost over so things have to start getting dark. After Wendla finds out that her friend is beaten with a belt, she talks to Melchior and tells him she's never felt pain. She rips a switch from a tree and demands he beat her. It's a really horrifying scene to watch but it yanks emotion from both parties and they part full of rage and fear. The story continues to darken when Moritz's teachers fail him, even though he has actually passed, because they feel he is a disgrace. Moritz must return home to tell his father the news.

The act ends with Wendla and Melchior is a hayloft together, Wendla trying to make amends. They kiss and Melchior begins to undress them both. Wendla protests and protests but slowly allows Melchior to go farther and farther. It is hard to tell whether Melchior overpowers Wendla, Wendla consents to his advances, or if she even understands what is happening. In the midst of this scene, the curtain falls.

Act two.
Moritz has been thrown out of his house and after failing to accrue enough wealth to flee to America, is wandering around the streets with a gun, planning to end his life. After an interaction with a childhood friend, he can stand life no matter and kills himself. During an inquiry into his death by school officials, an essay about sex written by Melchior and given to Moritz is found and Melchior is expelled and sent to reform school out of town.

With Melchior gone, it appears that Wendla becomes chronically ill until a doctor tells her mother she is pregnant. After her mother screams at her, Wendla figures out the connection between the hayloft and the baby and writes Melchior a letter. Her mother secretly finds a "doctor" willing to abort the child. When Melchior receives the letter, he escapes boarding school and races to get home to Wendla to marry her. However, shortly after Wendla's doctor's appointment, her mother takes her to the "doctor" who is going to get rid of the child quietly, Wendla completely unaware of the consequences.

After a grueling trip. Melchior returns home in search of Wendla and goes to their meeting place in the cemetery, Moritz's grave. Next to his best friends grave is a fresh plot. He wipes the leaves and dirt off the gravestones and reads the name "Wendla Bergmann". He pulls out a razor from his pocket and holds it to his throat, dreaming of his two friends and the life they could have had. Before he can commit to killing himself, visions of Wendla and Moritz come to him and tell him to continue and help them live on into adulthood and never let their stories be forgotten. He eventually decides to continue on and live his life with them in mind.

It's definitely a harrowing show but I thought the themes are very relevant to our class this semester. 

"A poem exists before it is written"

Madame Crommelynck invites Jason to her house to talk about Eliot Bolivar's poetry. In their discussions, they stumble across the definition of beauty and the inception of a poem. Basically, what Crommelynck is saying is that a creation doesn't really count as beautiful if it is made from pretty ingredients. The pretty ingredients trick a casual observer into seeing beauty that is really just a superficial facade. True beauty exists where words fail to exist. Something that is purely beautiful fills in a sentiment or expression that isn't articulate-able.

For me, this is especially true in music, particularly music without words. I find that words often become too cumbersome to express precise things. Also, a lot of the time, words just make music less international and meanings are lost in translation. For the most part, words tend to be the cosmetics used to dress up the music. Really good lyrics add to music in a way that doesn't compromise the independence of the piece but are hard to come by. Words are far more tolerable in poetry written by good poets because poets have no tune to hide behind; they are forced to make a tune with pitchless syllables. Anyway, inspiring music leaves a some sort of paradoxical void full of something that you can't really describe and that thing you can't describe is exactly what Madame Crommelynck is talking about. Words fail but the feeling still exists and a the opus becomes the definition.

I think that the progression of classical musical periods shows this well. Each period is a reaction to the period before. It's sort of like rebellion, yet a bit like an homage, and the contemporary periods always build off the one before. It's hard to express exactly how and why composers choose to do what they do but the music speaks for itself as composers add allusions to their mentors and foreshadow to future themes. Good music both becomes timeless and marks a period of time that is embodied in no other way.

As for the existence of poetry before the pen actually touches the paper, I have to say I am intrigued. I am, by no stretch of the imagination, a poet. It'd be cool to have poems descend on me, but for the most part, they steer clear of me. However, I do write a lot of vignettes. They aren't consolidated in any way because I don't really plan them out but they usually just take shape. Initially, I thought I could make the picture in my mind and then save it for later to record but after many lost scenes I just take a second to write them down in the moment. They are something that exists before, in my previous experience or observation, and I have been mulling over in the back of my mind but they don't take shape until I stumble across a context that embodies them.

Waiting

On page 166 of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Ruth says, "I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation."


This quote definitely resonates with me, as a senior, quickly approaching graduation. I literally don't know where I will be next year and this definitely made me think about how shortsighted teenagers are. Applying for college is like 30% work 70% waiting. First, you wait for common app to open. Then, you wait for the supplements. Then, you wait for the deadlines. Then to do the FAFSA and then acceptances, then aid packages and then May 1. But even after you wait all summer to finally go to college, you're still only in a holding period. College passes quickly and you still haven't found a stable position.

Sometimes the lack of stability annoys me and I just want to fast forward to where I go to the same job everyday and come home to the same people in the same house. The waiting is a little anxious. At times, I just want to know how everything is going to turn out. At this point, things that seem like a big deal will end up having no effect on my life and it's hard to gauge which decisions I make now will have a lasting effect. With all this waiting for all of the work to pay off, it's easy to idealize the stability of adult life. 


On the other hand, adult life could seem boringly stagnate. Being with the same people and doing the same work everyday could be just as uncomfortable as not knowing where you'll be in a few months. Stability can be seen as a comfort or a cage.


Maybe this is why Sylvie acts so childishly. She prefers the inconsistency of youth to the constancy of adulthood.