Will I?

Will I?
by Jonathan Larson

Will I lose my dignity?
Will someone care?
Will I wake tomorrow
From this nightmare?

That’s all the words there are to today’s song. Once you’ve heard it, though, you might find it impossible to get out of your mind. Will I? is from the 1996 musical Rent, a Tony- and Pulitzer-prize winning show. Sadly, its creator, Jonathan Larson, received all his awards posthumously – he died the night before Rent’s opening of an aortic aneurysm.

Now, truth be told, I’ve never cared all that much for Rent. First of all, it’s a reworking of Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème, and I’m not sure why Puccini’s masterpiece needed to be “updated”. We saw Baz Luhrman’s production of La Bohème in New York City in 2003. He had set it in 1957 Paris and had modernized the language in the subtitles (but not the sung words) and it worked just great for me. But to loosely take the storyline and think that, in order for modern audiences to “get it”, it needed (1) to be set in the artsy parts of New York City in the 1990s; (2) to change references from “tuberculosis” to “HIV/AIDS”; (3) to replace Puccini’s beautiful score with a small rock “orchestra”; and (4) to have that heavy dose of “attitude” that popular culture seems marinated in today – well, it just seems like creative teams these days have so little faith in their audiences that they don’t think they can make the connection from an older production to the present. It actually makes me long for the days when a creative artists’ indulgence was “relevance” rather than today’s “in your face”. I think people have more smarts than they give them credit for – at least I hope that’s still the case.

And then there was the music. The spare orchestrations probably made perfect sense when Rent started off-Broadway in a small space at the New York Theatre Workshop. But when it moved “uptown” to the Nederlander Theatre, I think they might have sprung for some more instruments. They surely were already paying for them under union rules. As for the songs themselves, I always found them to pale in comparison with Mr Puccini’s earlier works. To me, Mr Larson’s pieces lacked heft.

Except for this one. Will I? is an amazing piece of music to me. There are only four lines of text and the music just keeps repeating. But each time the stanza begins again, voices begin to enter. Then, they sign in rounds. Then, harmony is added. Then, the counterpoint begins to enter in mid-measure. The melody of the piece is intriguing, as well. It is very simple, but at the same time, there is a quirk to the rhythm that keeps it interesting. The first time I heard the piece, I thought it was in a strange meter. (I did the same thing with On the Willows from Godspell, the first time I heard it.) It wasn’t until the second time I listened to Will I?, and consciously counted the beats, that I realized that it was in a simple 8-measure, 4/4 rhythm.

We had a Cancer Ministry Workshop at church a couple of weeks ago. I thought of Mr Larson’s song then, too. We learned that people who are facing extreme health challenges (like cancer or AIDS or other life-threatening conditions) asked these same questions. It was amazing, too, how the training for ministering to cancer patients could apply to just about any homebound visitation situation.

Another of Mr Larson’s plays was Tick . . .Tick . . .Boom. It was never a hit and really only had a limited run after the phenomenal success of Rent. We’re also in the middle of a countdown this week. What is going on in the minds of Jesus and His followers? We know that, a couple of nights from now, Jesus will ask the Father very similar questions when he entreats Him, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”

All hell will break loose on Thursday and Friday of this week. We know that Jesus will be scourged, mocked, spat upon. In answer to His question, “Will I lose my dignity?” the answer, I’m afraid, is “yes”. And to “Will someone care?”, the answer is a little more complex: the disciples will scatter, leaving John, Mary (his mother), and some of the other women at the foot of the Cross. And, if Jesus asked you “Will I awaken from this nightmare?”, what would you, as a trusted friend and someone He loves very much, tell Him?

Tick . . . Tick . . .

And thanks, be to God, the Lord still says, “Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done.”