My mother was a bolter, to use the UK term. Like Princess Diana’s and Sarah Ferguson’s mothers (and sadly, many other kids’ mums), she flew the coop, leaving husband and children. I was 13 when it happened. She had not warned me. I came home from school one day and was informed that she had gone. She did not leave my life, I should add, but the whole thing was handled terribly (one part What Maisie Knew; one part The Sorrows of Gin). Years later, she and my father got back together, but it was not, I think, a romantic reunion. My mother carried enormous guilt and financial worries everywhere and I think returning to her marriage alleviated some of the guilt and some of those worries. At any rate, she left me with my dad. He was, at the time, at the height of his (impressive) drinking career and life with him was frightening, dangerous, often violent, unpredictable and sad. One song he used to listen to during this period, over and over, was Stephen Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns. Usually the Sinatra version but sometimes the Judy Collins version (the former superior to the latter). It took me years to separate the song from the emotions of those years but it did happen and now I can appreciate both the song and the power music can have on memory. (As powerful as certain smells? More so?) I can also appreciate my parents’ struggles, remember them both with more compassion and have an idea of what the lyrics must have meant to my father.
What brought all of this to mind is that I finally watched the Steven Spielberg West Side Story - simply marvellous. I liked the 1961 original, but Spielberg’s version was better and so many of the performances were an improvement - Rachel Zegler’s Maria head and shoulders above Natalie Wood’s Maria, for example. Sondheim’s lyrics are a joy in both versions, of course. One bit of silliness, though, was that Spielberg made the decision to not use subtitles when some of the characters were speaking Spanish. His reasoning? He said it was “out of respect for the inclusivity of our intentions to hire a totally Latinx cast to play the Sharks' boys and girls.” Seriously? How about respect for the viewers who can’t speak Spanish and might like to know what is being said? As someone from a country with two official languages, I can assure Spielberg that there is nothing disrespectful about using subtitles - especially when you want one segment of your population to understand the other segment. In fact, it is rather a mark of “inclusivity” to do so. It can be helpful to understand what the other person is saying.
But I digress. What I kept thinking, watching the movie, was that some people - among others, Sinatra and Sondheim - have the gifts of the gods. Imagine being able to write lyrics like this when you are only 27 (or any age.) I love the mockery of liberal/lefty pieties here. Such wit.