This morning I get in the car and wonder aloud, are there no positive songs about Mondays? “Monday Monday.” “Manic Monday.” “Rainy Days and Mondays.” It’s a miracle we get out of bed at all.
Okay, so it’s not that bad. It just feels like it. I’m still in my pre-coffee and bagel daze. I arrive at the Metro, and put on my headphones. The CD in my discman is Wicked, the new Stephen Schwartz musical based on Gregory McGuire’s Wizard of Oz prequel. It’s great. Idina Menzel, what a set of pipes on that girl. I’ve listened to the CD just maybe two times through, but my only quibble is that some of the music is a little flashy. Beautiful and soaring, but a little overwrought or clichéd (“generically impassioned,” says the Times), maybe?
Still, it’s powerful stuff. I surface in Bethesda, at the office building connected to the Metro exit, and open the door to the cold, biting air. The rush of life hits my face, and I hear on my headphones, as if intentionally timed, the climax of the song “Defying Gravity”:
So if you care to find me, look to the western sky
As someone told me lately, everyone deserves a chance to fly
And if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free
To those who ground me, take a message back from me
Tell them how I am defying gravity
I’m flying high, defying gravity
And soon I’ll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz
No wizard that there is or was
Is ever gonna bring me down
Wow. I can’t help it: I’m walking faster. Am I running now? No, it just feels like it. Woosh! The song ends, and I finally get to my office, seven floors up in the sky, but somehow my feet are back on the ground.
I can’t wait to see this show.