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03/01/11 - (1)
West Side Story Echoes
For enigmatic, oblique reasons, this Tuesday evening, Bernstein and Sondheim's haunting song "Maria" Whispers its dreamy melody, through fifty years of memory, And I begin singing, behind my misty eyes, those exquisite lyrics, Which first discovered me in my mid-teens, When I, like Tony, in West Side Story, Was edging, awkwardly, uneasily, Into the growing complexities of life, love, longing, and loss: "The most beautiful sound I've ever heard: Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria... All the beautiful sounds of the world, in a single word. I've just met a girl named Maria, And suddenly that name will never be the same to me — Maria."
Gradually, as I hum, the name changes to Linda, And I see the two of us when we were youth's protégés — You in Brooklyn, not far from where the Jets and Sharks rumbled, I in St. Louis, a thousand miles distant from Broadway — Listening to, swooning over, this seductive song, Feeling the inchoate intimacy of those two passional souls. Could it be that, even then, You and I were listening for each other, to each other, Between those uniquely compelling lines ("All the beautiful sounds of the world, in two single words — Linda, L.D."), Hoping only that, one day, we might transcend the fate Of Tony and Maria, Come unto each other, in a covenant of unsunderable love?
03/01/11 - (1)
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