-2024.11.19-
On Passing Stange By Stew
We want the song, but we don't wanna BE a song. We want to be loved, but love will never come if we onlt WANT. We want to stay real, but daring not to change only hinders the the real.
Three years ago, I once asked a literature teacher what if I could not observe a story from a third-person perspective but felt obliged to walk in whoever was in the story's shoes. It's true that I believe at least a part of the purpose of having those stories told is to make us resonate with them, yet I was just annoyed by my inability to detach from it, even if most of the time (and in fact, always) we are not the exact same as whom we thought we could understand.
Therefore, I found myself constantly shifting between resonating with the stories and the characters and maintaining a distant viewpoint - just like the tug-of-war between immersing in a performance and analyzing it. Just to list a few that I encountered in the past few years: I felt 'wait for it' so much appealing when Burr in Hamilton claims so - yet the legacy Burr stood on was only a privilege to a few; I fancied how Will Hunter decides to step out his cage of being intelligent and chase his love - yet most of us are nor intelligent or lovable as such; I envied how Nodame and Chiaki from Nodame Cantabile become each others savior and flourish together wholesomely - yet expecting or relying on some external savior is just a myth in this life; and I wish I could be driven as hell like Emmett in Legally Blonde with a chip on my shoulder - yet that burden takes so much courage to be undertaken. I could keep name-dropping here, but the point is that however I felt resonated in those stories, my urge turned out to be always retained by so-called poise.
Weird enough, however, when watching Passing Strange, despite that Youth would be the most distant one if compared to the list above - whether in terms of the distance between cultural, racial, historical, and geographical backgrounds that honestly confused me in the first California chapter or the actions I may never do, I felt the right to resonate with him. After all, all those resonance-hesitations I had facing coming of age, identity, chasing dreams and the real, love, family, and so on are not 'staged' (if I would call it in general) but, thanks to the unique voice Passing Stange has due to Stew's life story, once again 'lived' on stage. This authenticity of the art being carefully 'lived' in a sense, from my perspective, exactly matches with how 'love is the only real' transforms into 'love is beyond the real' in the play/concert - love as itself and the 'life.' In fact, while I tried to keep a cultural/ethnic perspective in the first chapter of the show and attempted to 'understand,' it was 'forgotten' later on. Of course, those themes are there. However, maybe just like how we discussed the role of having an all-black ensemble instead of accentuating the racial theme, it appeared to me as the embodiment of something universal enough for me to immerse even clearly knowing those particular 'cultures,' the middle class African American in California, Amsterdam, and Berlin, are not mine. That is, in that unique storytelling of something personal, I found and was touched by the universality.
Youth chased the real - maybe even without knowing what 'the real' was when he set off. In fact, I myself cannot tell what is the real. Yet it still pokes us to act, to move, and to strive for. By all means, I intend not to downgrade 'the real' neither in the show nor in my life. On the other hand, it was literally the first time ever I was reminded to actually examine my life, my satisfaction, my uncomfort, and my desire from a top-down approach: to what extent that idealized perfect future is in the life, or they only exist in the 'lied inside.' When Youth was stoned by Venus' courage to bleed, so did I. When everyone goes home for Christmas, Youth is engulfed by that loneliness and self-questioning, and so am I. As a matter of fact, after watching the show, for the first time in the past decade, I texted my mother and said, 'I miss you so much.' (Math done by my mom) The cruel reality in that mother-son phone call climaxed my 'epiphany' and 'trauma.' My defense mechanism would work perfectly whatever is thrown towards 'me' but not something external yet so embedded called 'family,' 'mom,' and 'unconditional love.' Although I had not only once claimed that courage is worth seeking, it seems to me now, only when starting to accept that the real may not exist in our life (well, maybe in arts), just like Stew ('s friend) said, and the life and love we already have at this moment are beyond the ethereal idea of the real, the truth, the pure, the absolute, and the whatsoever that have been used as an excuse to escape from the present, and starting to look, not only the lied inside, but every precious piece other then that, courage will start to root in the lied inside.
Does it mean the art is the healing and the cure, and love is real that Nowhaus and I pronounced it wrong? No, not at all. They are even thousands of times more real now. If there is no such thing called the real in life - cuz life is something beyond - then it's the precise reason for us, at least for me, to have it in - maybe not life - but also an ideal world beyond life. The reality and the real are never against each other, I would say - they are beyond each other in different senses, and it should be in each of them that we ground ourselves inch by inch. Missing either one would make the love not love, the life not life, and the real not real.
Mask removed, being seen, I saw, and I will say that 'thank you' to y'all.
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