Love in the Key of D

Once again, the world changes....

If I have failed to mention JB, I have been remiss.

JB is an enabler. He enables my dream.

I dream of Watergate! the Musical, meet JB, and shazam!.....a creation.

I enjoyed the research. I enjoyed the writing. But most of all, I enjoyed creating music with JB. Throughout the spring and summer, we met at his home, where our children would play (for the most part) nicely in the basement. He said (more than once) "How should it go? Sing it for me." NOBODY asks me to sing. Well, my children, who don't know any better. And JB, who took the tunes that were in my head, imperfectly rendered in my imperfect voice, and created them even better than my imagination.

I marvel at his genius.

Today, I watch him work.

Late to Watergate! rehearsal, after attending in my capacity as a parent the first portion of the first Really Rosie rehearsal, I enter to quiet. JB is speaking to the group, assembled facing him, backs to me. I unobtrusively find a seat near the only other person who is not singing, Jose. JB is teaching the cast How Could You, Mr. President?, which is dirge-like and heartwrenching. This is the number that overlays Nixon's resignation speech, and it's gorgeous. JB turns the cast into a choir as I snuggle up to Jose and show him the cuts in the speech. The music under the speech, the song between the paragraphs, the sorrow and anger, the rise and fall of voices harmonically blended brings tears to my eyes.

Next, work on the finale, Autobiography, which is a wonderful piece also, and the rehearsal finishes with a review of the opener, Saturday Night: Massacre! CJ enters with rehearsal schedules to hand out, and Jose and the cast perform How Could You for her. Her eyes gleam suspiciously, but all she says is, "I think the audience will sit still for it."

JB has taken my words, the clumsy ones, the clever ones, and made of them exquisite works ofaudible beauty. Amazing and incredible, he.

The irritating, sudden loss of my second Haldeman actor seems far less significant now.

Tonight, with gentle click and shush of frozen water against frozen ground, white confetti fills my picture window, illuminated by the streetlamp across the way. Awake I remain, like Robert Frost, to watch my neighborhood fill up with snow.