Trapped

Full disclosure. I am a big musical theater dork (like you all didn't know that already?) As a result, most of my knowledge of Russian pogroms during the late 19th Century comes from Fiddler on the Roof. My awareness of the old testament stories comes from Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. The New Testament - Godspell and JC Superstar. Of Arthurian England? Camelot. Presidential assassins? Assassins.

You get the picture.

So while the whole incident of the mining tragedy was unfolding I couldn't get Floyd Collins out of my head.

It's one of my favorite shows. The story based on the true tale of Floyd Collins, who was trapped in a cave in Kentucky on January 30, 1925. Rescuers made every attempt to pull him free but they did not reach him until February 16, and by then he'd already perished underground.

The show is wonderful and creative, and tells the story not only of Floyd, but of his relationship with his sister and family (these aspects may all be fictional, I'm not sure), his role in the town, and of the media circus that soon surrounds the trapped young man, particularly the role that one nervy reporter has with the story (think Baby Jessica down the well).

Anyhow, not to minimize the mining accident by comparing it to a musical. And I know that the situations are very different, since Floyd was a cave-obsessed spelunker who would tempt fate again and again going down because he loved exploring, while the folks in West Virginia were simply trying to put food on their table.

But the lyrics to Floyd's last song are beautiful nonetheless. At this stage he has accepted the inevitability of his death and he is questioning what will come next.

So, as a tribute of sorts, courtesy of Adam Guettel and Tina Landau:

How Glory Goes
Is it warm?
Is it soft against your face
Beside the breeze?
Do you feel a kind of grace?
Will there be trees?
Is there light?
Does it harbour on the ground?
Does it shine from all around?
Or just from you?
Is it endless and empty
And you wander on your own
Slowly forget about the folks that you have known?
Or does rising bread
Fill up the air
From open kitchens everywhere
Familiar faces far as you can see?
Like a family?
Do we live?
Is it like a little town?
Do we get to look back down
At who we loved?
Are we above?
Are we everywhere?
Are we anywhere at all?
Do we hear a trumpet call us
And we're by your side?
Will I want?
Will I wish for all the things I should have done
Longing to finish what I've only just begun?
Or has shining truth been waiting there?
For all the questions everywhere
In a world of wondering
Suddenly you know
And you will always know
Will my mother be there waiting for me
Smiling like the way she does
And holding out her arms as she calls my name?
She will hold me
Just the same
Only heaven knows how glory goes
What each of us is meant to be
In the starlight
That is what we are
I can see so far