2 December 2021

[scenicdesign71]

Georges Seurat turns 162 today.

I'm seeing Caroline, or Change tonight.

Last Friday's news didn't hit me so hard at first, but it's been gradually, painfully been sinking in.  I didn't do a lot of grief-watching (or -listening, or anything) over the weekend, apart from rewatching Six By Sondheim and compiling those obits on the other page (without even reading a majority of them, to be honest).  Mostly I just focused on what a seemingly enviable exit it was: a busy, productive, apparently healthy and lucid final week; a festive Thanksgiving surrounded by his husband and friends; a blessedly quick and peaceful departure.  "We should all be so lucky," as one of those friends remarked to the Daily Mail over the weekend.  (Or as my brother put it in a kind text message on Saturday: "he spent his life being very successful at what he loved doing and then dies quickly and pretty painlessly.  At 91!  I mean, yeah, that'll work.") For someone so famously skeptical of happy endings, Steve's sure sounds -- delightful irony -- unambiguously pretty darn swell.

All I could really think to mourn was (1) that he'd never finish Square One, and (2) that I'll never get a chance to meet him, or even send a fan letter or a picture or two of the few designs I've thus far created for shows of his.  The former may not have been too likely anyway, and the latter is no one's fault but my own, for not acting way sooner.  Both primarily selfish wishes, neither is exactly earth-shattering in the larger scheme of things.

And yet it aches.  He was my one real lifelong hero; I've otherwise never been much for idol-worship, even in passing "phases"; and other celebrity deaths, as a rule, have scarcely registered with me at all.  But you didn't know them, some unkind part of me always wants to protest, when faced with news clips of teary fans mourning the passing of this or that notable figure.  And -- taking my own medicine -- it's true, I didn't know him; and likely never would have, under any readily imaginable circumstances; and now never will.  But I still somehow miss him terribly.

[DiveMilw]

Yes, David.  You've summed up a lot of what I've been feeling, when I've allowed myself to feel all the feelings.  The only "bad" thing about Sondheim's death is that he didn't have a long, protracted illness so we could get used to the thought of him passing away.  But I'm glad that didn't happen because that would have been for us, his fans.  I wouldn't have wanted that for him.