So speaking of the Tonys I've been trying to catch up on listening to soundtracks from Tony-winning shows and both Dear Evan Hansen and Hadestown have their hooks deep in me
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Like if you know the story and you listen to the song in the right mood the tragedy is overwhelming, it's unbearable He's making up detail after detail of a perfect day that never happened with a best friend who in real life despised him
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The joyous climax of the song is the moment that (SPOILERS) in real life is the moment he gave in to despair and tried to kill himself
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I think this is one of those things we genuinely need a word for "Nostalgia for events that never occurred" A feeling sharper and more painful than the nostalgia for things you actually had and then lost An emotion powered entirely by the boundless capacity of imagination
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I feel like pushing back a little whenever I see a cynical take about how nostalgia is self-delusion "The '80s weren't a great time to be alive, they sucked in many ways actually" "If you study history, America was never great" "Childhood was shittier than being an adult"
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YEAH I KNOW That's what makes it *worse* than if any of those things were actually true You know what hurts so much worse than nostalgia for the way things were, is *the way things should have been*
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The fact that Evan's perfect day is so vivid in his mind it comes spilling out of him without effort I was gonna say "more real" than what actually happened that day but of course it isn't It's exactly as real It's the photo negative of that day
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That's why the fantasy comes so easy and so sharp and clear It's not something he invents to replace the real memory, it IS the real memory Everything that actually happened on that day was a reaction to his impossible dream Every detail of a dream was a reaction to reality
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George MacDonald (C.S. Lewis' literary idol) said that's what's tragic about suicide If you really believed suicidal people desired death, there'd be nothing to mourn -- they got what they wanted, right But nobody actually wants to die -- that supposed desire is a contradiction
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The people who can't stand living feel that way because they want to live most of all And they know that this thing they have instead ISN'T FUCKING LIVING And the contrast between the desire and the reality is so sharp, so clear, so vivid it's unbearable agony
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Every single joyful, wistful line in the song paints Evan's despair in negative space Everything is the exact opposite of what he was really feeling, everything is what he wished for and could see so clearly he could touch it but was never really there
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"There's nothing that we can't discuss" (there was no one he could talk to at all) "There's nowhere else I'd rather be" (he would've rather been anyone else) "All we see is sky for forever, all we see is light for forever" (the dark and cold closed in until he couldn't breathe)
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"Bike the Appalachian trail Or write a book or learn to sail Wouldn't that be cool?" (he tried and tried to think of something he could do in the future that would make him happy and had nothing) "Feels like we could go on forever this way" (he couldn't go on one more second)
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It cuts so fucking deep That he reimagines every single detail of the event What if I climbed to the top of the tree out of childlike glee, because I was so excited I had to see how high I could go, because I loved the world so much I wanted to see as much of it as I could
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What if I fell because I was so excited and happy I forgot myself in a moment of pure carefree adrenaline, my sense of myself dissolving in the sunlight and the wind and the smell of spring
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Instead of shrinking deeper and deeper into myself, brutally wounding myself with the cold bitter numbness that cuts like a knife, until, with my eyes closed tight and my teeth drawing blood from my cheek, I made myself let go
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What if, when I opened my eyes with the pain shooting through my arm, realizing I was alive, that I was going to go home now and life was going to go on as it was before What if that made me feel *relief*
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Neil Gaiman made Despair and Desire twin siblings in Sandman Like if you really don't understand what the word "dysphoria" means just remember it's the exact opposite of "euphoria"
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Just imagine all the memories you go back to that make life bearable, the scrapbook of photos that get you through hard times And understand everyone has one of those, but some people have to live with the knowledge that all the photos are fakes
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End of conversation
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