Vissi D'arte!!

Here goes!

Waking up this morning was a process. (I wrote this several days ago.) It involved a few incoming text message chimes, the snooze button *several* times, and a break to go wee and have a cookie. But every time my conscious mind overtook my unconscious one, that is to say, every time I woke up, this one part of the show kept creeping in. La Franklin, the Southern Baptist Rebel (played by Colman Domingo) loses himself for a moment while smoking a joint. Maria Callas comes through, ever immortalized by queers everywhere. Vissi d’arte! I was going to say that it was that image from the movie that was on loop in my head, but the visual was secondary to the sound - his falsetto, the notes themselves, and the reverb effect.

I agree completely with Scott’s comment about this show’s “earworms”. It’s an apt description for niggling little bug things that make their way into your brain’s folds or that set up shop in the curve of your ear. They’re welcome to be there – most of the time – but I admire the talent it takes to craft one. I doubt it was wholly intentional. I don’t think Stew and Heidi engineered each one of these sound bites for the purpose of being catchy; that’s the pop music mogul’s job. “A colored paradise where the palm trees sway…” The words are soothing, but still the dated language makes something in you (me?) recoil. The cast sings like wind through pastel trees. The electric guitar is honeyed butter, soulful but not mournful. It’s quite likely that people like us are more susceptible to things like this. I mean, we’re already choosing to give up so many of our evenings to be in a musical, but I think that non-Passing-Strange-fanatics might catch themselves humming.

It’s bad that I don’t recognize the aria. I’ve never even heard Tosca in its entirety. (And I got a degree in this shit!) But a quick Google search reveals that Vissi D’Arte translates as “I lived for art.” Now that I look back on that scene, it fits.