Stephen Sondheim: One Year Later

I promise I'll limit myself to one Sondheim post in the anniversary week of his death.

I've been thinking about Sondheim's love of the present participle: "Losing My Mind," "Finishing the Hat," "Putting It Together," "Being Alive," "Everything's Coming Up Roses," "Waiting for the Girls," "Good Thing Going," "Something's Coming," "Someone's Waiting," "Not Getting Married," "Loving You."

The present participle suggests a transition. I *was* single. I now have a good thing going. At some point, the good thing will be gone.

"Finishing the Hat" is famously about the kind of illness you contend with as you're creating something; the song isn't about being finished, but about struggling *toward* the finish line. A shift in syntax lines up with the end of the song: We go from "Finishing the Hat" to "Look, I *Made* a Hat." (And Sondheim enjoyed this joke so much that he reproduced the joke in his "song-memoirs," the two books he released before he died.)

Sondheim's great gift was for spotting journeys--everywhere--and for dramatizing those journeys:

Finishing a hat....

Mapping out a sky...

Reaching through the world of the hat....

Studying a face...

Stepping back to look at a face....

The participles can feel like an assault:

Putting it together--

Building up the image--

Fixing and perfecting the design.

Adding just a dab of politician.....

Always knowing when to draw the line...

Having just a vision's no solution....

And the participles can help to convey the excitement you feel as you anticipate date night:

Waiting around for the girls upstairs....

Clicking heels on steel and cement...

Picking up the giggles floating down through the vent....

Hearing the sound of the girls above....

Dressing to go on the town....

Precise paint strokes from a beautiful mind. I miss that guy.

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