Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again
lyrics by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe
music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Passing bells
and sculpted angels,
cold and monumental,
seem, for you,
the wrong companions –
you were warm and gentle . . .
– Christine, in The Phantom of the Opera

The world’s most popular musical, The Phantom of the Opera, opened at London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre on October 9, 1986. It has never had an empty seat since. The original leads from London reprised their roles with the original Broadway cast and that production became the longest-running Broadway musical of all time on January 9, 2006 when it surpassed another Andrew Lloyd Webber production, Cats, at 7,486 performances. And it’s still going.

The object of the Phantom’s obsession is Christine Daaé, a beautiful, innocent, tessitura soprano in the chorus of Paris’ Grand Opera. Christine is at first drawn in by the Phantom’s mysterious advances, thinking that she is hearing from her father, who died when she was young. It is this deep longing for her father that motivates Christine and leaves her vulnerable to the Phantom’s distorted genius.

In Act II, Christine finds herself caught in a game between those who are using her to catch the Phantom. She is also unsure of the love that dashing Raoul, the Vicompte de Chagny, has for her. She visits her father’s grave and pours out her heart:

You were once
my one companion . . .
you were all
that mattered . . .
You were once
a friend and father -
then my world
was shattered . . .

Our family came to know “the World’s most popular musical” slowly. The first time I ever heard any music from Phantom, we were having dinner overlooking the Magic Kingdom on the top floor of the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World. The band announced that they were going to perform a lovely ballad from a new hit show on Broadway. As the singers sang the beautiful duet, All I Ask of You, my daughter and I danced (Lindsay was three and a half at the time, so she stood on top of my shoes) while fireworks lit up Cinderella’s Castle and Space Mountain.

A few years, later, my cousin Ralph was visiting from Oregon. He and my dad had always been close (before I was born, Ralph had lived with my folks for a year while he went to a special grade school in Tulsa). He gave my father a cassette of the music from The Phantom of the Opera. My father had listened and really liked it, so when my daughter and I were getting ready to embark on a cross-country vacation (our first one with just the two of us), dad gave me the cassette for the trip. Lindsay and I instantly liked it, too, and it became our constant companion on the 2,864 miles over 10 days. From the Swedish smorgasbord in the middle of Kansas; to the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota; to Mount Rushmore; to Devil’s Tower; to Yellowstone; to the Grand Tetons; to Vail; to my aunt’s house in Raton; and back home, we sang along, made up words when we didn’t know what they were saying, and tried to guess the story line without knowing it. (In my case I also had to decide whether singing an octave lower than the Phantom was still too high for my voice, or whether I needed to drop it down two octaves: how does Michael Crawford sing that high? Or, maybe it’s best not to tell me.)

One aside: I scheduled our trip without knowing about the annual Harley-Davidson Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. By the time we reached the Black Hills, we were a lone SUV awash in a sea of choppers, hogs and sidecars. The riders were all very nice, but I had never seen so many tattoos (some were even on the men), ponytails (some were even on the women), and earrings (some were even in ears). Well, maybe two asides: because we visited Devil’s Tower while listening to the London cast recording of Phantom, I now think of that pipe organ music whenever I hear the five-note Close Encounters theme. But conversely, when we saw Phantom in London the next year and saw the cast climbing down the iron gate at the end of show, I now always associate that scene with the climbers we saw rappelling down the side of Devil’s Tower – I can even smell the pine trees instead of the Paris storm sewers. Oh, I forgot, here’s one more: I got stopped for speeding in Yellowstone (I was actually also passing in a no passing zone, too). The police out there are Federal Marshalls, and they mean business. As the Marshall sternly walked up to my window, I turned off the Phantom tape – or at least I thought I did. I must have hit “rewind” or something because, just as the Marshall was taking my license and lecturing me on the dangers of the mountain roads, the pipe organ blared out – and I mean blared. He let me off with a warning. Now, I can't prove this, but I truly believe this was a providential occurrence saving me from the clink or at least a hefty fine. As Jim Lovell says in Apollo 13, “You never know what events are going to transpire to lead you home.”

In my case, I am blessed to know a lot of those transpiring events. As the Psalmist says, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly inheritance. (Psalm 16:6)” Unlike poor Christine Daaé, I was fortunate to have a loving and very present mom and dad. My main concern is to not muddy up the rich heritage I have been given.

Wishing you were
somehow here again . . .
wishing you were
somehow near . . .
Sometimes it seemed
if I just dreamed,
somehow you would
be here . . .

I remember my friend Jim telling me of a day he volunteered to take one of their neighbor boys to school. The boy’s mother was dying of cancer. As Jim dropped the boy off at school, he saw some of the other kids come up, knock his books out of his hand, and make fun of him. Jim said, “I just pulled over and sat for a minute and wanted to cry. Those kids had no idea what was going on in his life.” I can be so dense and insensitive myself; maybe not intentionally mean, but unaware of the importance of the moment nonetheless. I’m trying to do better.

Dreaming of you
won't help me to do
all that you dreamed
I could . . .

I start to put today’s post together at about 11:59pm on March 3, the last possible moment I could and still say that it began on the fourth anniversary of the passing of my dad. I was fortunate: we had a full life together, not like Christine Daaé and her father who was taken so early. I also think dad had a “two minute warning” and, thankfully, I was not too dense to ignore it: almost, but not quite. He called and, out of the blue, wanted to go to a barbeque place we hadn’t been to in years. At dinner, he looked out over the river bottom and told me something I had never heard – about how he and his father and brother had raised pigs on the river bottom during the Depression. Then, we drove home. As we got out of the car, he mentioned that his leg was cramping. I helped him in to his chair. He sat down, laid his head back – and was welcomed by the ones we can’t see. It was the perfect ending to a good life, and for that I am grateful. But a loved one’s memory has a very long half-life – and actually I am immensely grateful for that, as well, even if does carry with it pain as well as joy.

Wishing you were
somehow here again . . .
knowing we must
say goodbye . . .
Try to forgive . . .
teach me to live . . .
give me the strength
to try . . .

You know that cassette tape of Phantom I mentioned earlier? It had a glitch in it and one of the songs contained two short little skips. (I had a Joni Mitchell record like that in Law School and I got so used to the skips that, even now when I hear Song for Sharon correctly on the iPod, it doesn’t sound right.) The same thing happened with the Phantom music and I still wait for that moment on the full-cast recording where the jump should be. It doesn’t sound quite right, even though it is. In the same way, I have learned as I have grown older that the record my father left me may have a couple of minor skips. More importantly, though, my father’s life story and love are a beautiful soundtrack that I can share with my daughter. And it will always sound right to me, even as I try, for her, to fill in the missing beats.

Ave atque vale
Douglas M Smith, Sr
1914 December 3 – 2004 February 28
Body laid to rest and life celebrated on 2004 March 3