No Day But Today

So, for most people Thanksgiving weekend means shopping, for me, it means seeing movies.

Saturday night I saw "Rent".

It wasn’t my choice, but I am glad that I saw it.

I saw it with my friend N, a very talented singer and actor, who, with the right vehicle will prove to the world all that he is capable of. I believe that. He is also a dear friend, and it was good to catch up a bit. He is (like me) a big musical theater dork so it seemed like the right time to indulge in the Rent thing.

I saw Rent on stage in 1996, the year after it opened on Broadway. The cast was still the original cast and they were still giving out the first two rows of tickets to the line of people waiting for them for something like $20. Later they went to a lottery system and it was more about luck than endurance. But in 1996, my friend R and I came up from North Carolina, got in line at like 5am, got the tickets, traversed the city for the day, then came back to see the show running on little but adrenaline and caffeine.

To see the show then felt like we were witnessing something new and exciting and meaningful in theater. It was a very different time. I was a very different person, sort of. It was a good thing.

I have pictures from that trip. Maybe I’ll find them and post them sometime. I think in some of them I am wearing the same corduroys I had on tonight. Corduroys that I bought my first year at Michigan. Yes -- 1993 corduroys from the Urban Outfitters in Ann Arbor. I still love those corduroys.

They fit me differently now. They are a bit snug. But I love them.

To be honest, the movie feels sort of unnecessary. For one, while it is great that they used most of the original cast (and that does feel right, as they were the ones that made Rent the phenomenon that it was in the past decade and actually worked with Jonathanon Larson) you can't help but think, wow - these guys are all nearly forty. I mean they must be. I am thirty. They must be nearing forty. And, while they still costume Mark in his telltale striped sweaters and scarves, there are moments where you can’t help but be aware of their age, which also makes you think– fuck, this isn’t 1989 at all, this is 2005, these guys are all settled and doing well and probably living in the ‘burbs instead of the East Village and the East Village and Alphabet City are an entirely different place than they were in 1989, shit - than they were in 1996 when I saw the show, and the Life cafe in the movie doesn’t look at all like I remember, and do we really have to watch Maureen do performance art because who really does performance art anymore and ultimately how much suspension of disbelief can we really buy into?

And yet, here I am wearing my 1993 corduroys, so things can’t have changed that much.

Or else, I am just far too attached to things and to memories.

This was telling: there was a moment when I remembered that Collins, Mimi, Roger and Angel ALL have AIDS. And I thought jeez, I don’t remember this being such an AIDS play, I mean, does everyone have AIDS? How realistic is that?

But at the time, it was important to have another play about AIDS. And it felt really relevant.

That was a time when AIDS, and the fear of AIDS, was extremely present in this country. When it truly was a death sentence. And it both isolated and completely galvanized a generation. And I lived through that, and yet it seems like so long ago.

AIDS. Isn’t that what is now killing the continent of Africa? Do we even think about AIDS anymore? Don’t people live full lives with HIV for decades now?

I remember when Falsettos, and Angels in America, and Rent were the most important new theater pieces being done. And now Bill Finn is writing about spelling bees and Kushner is writing about his childhood and collaborating with Maurice Sendak.

Everyone has grown a bit nostalgic. And that’s not an entirely bad thing.