 Lighter than Air |
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Can we please just talk about Mary Poppins for a minute? We could, I suppose, talk about how work is increasingly heinous and how I mortified myself, my boss, and pretty much the entire establishment in a meeting the other day, how I got new sheets that are very soft, that I bathed the dogs for the first time in ages and Zuko rolled so ferociously in the mud immediately afterwards that he turned to a black mudball and I lacked the energy to bathe him again so now he's just sort of brown indefinitely, that Marley threw up in six places on my bedroom floor and saved the biggest, hairballiest hurl for the comforter on my bed, that I'm going to Vegas and all of the great suggestions I've gotten about things to do there (I will share those later), and that I've eaten so much in the past few days that I can hardly walk but that still all I really want to do is eat numerous Twix bars layer by layer. But really I would just rather talk about Mary Poppins. I've been listening to the soundtrack lately. In addition to the utter joy induced by singing "Sister Suffragettes" at the top of one's voice, there's a great bonus track at the end with commentary by the songwriters where they talk about the making of the film and play little snippets of the songs, singing and playing on the piano, as they explain how they came to be written. And it is just delightful. I love the way they are obviously such amazing musicians and lyricists and totally not vocalists but how they still sing little demos of their songs with such gusto. They talk about how Walt Disney or Julie Andrews would like certain songs and how they rewrote the chords for "Chim Chim Cheree" because at first it sounded too Russian and they play the before and after versions and really the difference is charming and kind of amazing. And how they wrote this grand ballad for Julie Andrews, who hated it so it didn't make it into the movie. And how they found the retired actress who played Ma Joad and wooed her into play the bird woman. I think if I had to pick a favorite song, it would probably be "Feed the Birds," which I realize is weird. But I loved it so much when I was a little girl. It filled me with such an aching sense of meloncholy that it was like I experienced a true catharsis every time I listened to it. I would sit in the little alley between my bed and the window with all of my Barbies and there was one with brown hair who was of course my favorite and she was always giving concerts. For her happy, in-love songs, she'd sing something upbeat from Grease like "You're the One that I Want" and she and Ken would bop around to the beat as if singing to each other. When she was sad or lonely, she would sing "Feed the Birds." Which just means that I'd put that beautiful illustrated record -- remember how it had art from the film on both sides? -- on the record player and have her toss her hair around woefully and perch her plastic hand up to her mouth like it was holding a microphone and I'd imagine emotions on her expressionless face and then she and Ken would make out after the song. So I listened to that song all the time when I was little because Barbie was often morose, especially when her operator would be sent to her room by her mother for being a brat and she'd tire of slipping the "No offence but I relly hate you rite now" notes under the door for her mother to see that by the way her mother kept and are now charmingly sitting in a box of childhood mementos along with stories of magic shoes and the cow that produced orange juice instead of milk. And now that I think about it and have listened to the commentary, I realized that it's not a sad song at all but rather one about how the tiniest good thing you do for another person or creature can make a difference. It's a hopeful song even though it makes you want to cry because it sounds so full of heartache. Jesus! Anyway. "Feed the Birds." Pretty song. But really that is not what I want to talk about. I really cannot get over the song that Bert and the dad sing at the end when the dad half-speaks and half-sings: To carve his niche in the edifice of time Before the mortar of his zeal Has a chance to congeal The cup is dashed from his lips The flame is snuffed a-borning He's brought to rack and ruin in his prime Aside from the awesome rhyme of zeal and congeal and the fact that half-sung, half-spoken songs delivered by men in showtunes totally kill me because it's like they're so overcome but trying to restrain it and just can't get the breath out to sing (like in "Each evening from December to December, before you drift to sleep upon your cot..."), it just makes me want to curl up on the floor and suck my thumb. Like, he's so mean and too busy for his kids and just kind of a jerk with a giant pole up his butt, but the truth is that he just wants to carve his niche in the edifice of time. AND WHO DOESN'T? But he's going about it the whole wrong way. And then Mary Poppins comes along "with chaos in her wake" and knocks some sense into him and Bert is there to kind of wrap it up in nutshell and say: At that grindstone Though childhood slips like sand through a sieve And all too soon they've up grown And then they've flown And it's too late for you to give COME ON. Something about the dad missing the childhoods of Jane and Michael while it slips like sand through a sieve. It's just too much. But the beauty is that it's not too late! It's not too late for them. And they all go and fly kites together. And I don't know, honestly, if there has ever been a more likeable, accessible actor in the history of the musical theater than Dick Van Dyke. You've got your Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and if you can't root for him singing to the children about how he's got them and they've got him and they've all got each other, you have no heart. And then you've got your Mary Poppins, where I think my whole life I just thought of him as this chimney sweeping, sidewalk chalking guy who laughed until he floated up to the ceiling, but the truth is that Bert is just as smart and life-altering as Mary Poppins even though she gets all the credit. And let's not forget about how though he's just a diamond in the rough, he'd never think of pressing his advantage and forbearance is the hallmark of his creed and a lady needn't fear when he is near. Basically, Mary Poppins was intimating to all of us that a lot of men are cads who just want to peek under your parasol, but not Bert, no, sir. And it's probably not even best to get me started on Bye Bye Birdie and every single moment of his performance of the hard on his luck songwriter Albert Peterson, so put upon by both his girlfriend and of course his mother, and the way he describes himself as "perfect in every way" when everyone's singing about how horrible are kids today and the way he draws little smiley faces in the air to try to cheer Rosie up when she's being a cranky shrew. Plus, his accents! He's so good at accents. I love him. In short, Julie Andrews has probably brought more happiness to the soul of humanity than any other living person, but Dick Van Dyke is no slouch. And if I were ever to have kids, I swear to God one of the main reasons would be so I could do things like show them Mary Poppins. I'm not sure that's a very good reason, but there you go. But I digress again. I mean, we are all just grind, grind, grinding at that grindstone, aren't we? And shouldn't we all pause and fly a kite every now and then? Yes, I think we should. The days go by so quickly and the grinding gets so wearisome. There is so much more to life than the grind. I need to remember that. And upon doing a little research, I see that guys who did the music for Mary Poppins were brothers who also did tons of other stuff, are being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame next week, and wrote the music for Charlotte's Web. Which let's face it has some of the best songs of any animated film, ever. Just off the top of my head -- you've got Zuckerman's famous pig, chin up, we've got lots in common, I can talk, and everyone's favorite, the one about all of the garbage to be eaten by the rats after the fair, the veritable smorgasbord. And in just one example of worlds colliding, I just figured out that Templeton the rat was voiced by none other than Mr. McAfee, as in, "Me? Harry McAfee, appearing with Ed Sullivan?" from Bye Bye Birdie. That is beautiful. P.S. I think that the remaking of Charlotte's Web into a live action film with Dakota Fanning as Fern is both Bad and Wrong. Even though I'm kind of intrigued by Steve Buscemi's take on Templeton. But wait. Julia Roberts as the voice of Charlotte? Oh, my God.
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