LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
The Gospel According To Marc: The Sound of Music...and Shouting |
by Marc Acito |
I keep a tape recorder in my car so I can make notes for my writing; I'm a terrible driver and I figure our roads are safer without me trying to find a pencil and my lane at the same time. But the other day I left my tape recorder on accidentally and ended up recording the entire thrilling excursion from Safeway to the drycleaners.
I listen to the tape afterwards out of curiosity and make a shocking revelation: I talk to myself. And not in an intelligent Hamlet soliloquizing kind of way, but in the disjointed, incoherent mumbling manner of insane homeless people collecting cans in shopping carts. I also sing. Constantly. Oftentimes I'll be waiting in line somewhere and a person will turn to me and say, "What a nice voice you have," or "Do ya' mind? I'm tryin' to pee" and I'll think, "Geez, was I singing? I hadn't realized." I just can't help myself. So I was a little skeptical when I bought a ticket to the opening night of The Sing-a-long Sound of Music, the new Rocky Horror type of audience participation experience. Every viewing of The Sound of Music is a sing-a-long as far as I'm concerned. What's more, is now really the time for girls (or in this case, more likely boys) in white dresses with blue satin sashes? I wasn't sure. Since I have neither the time nor the ability to fashion lederhosen or dirndls out of curtains, I simply cut down some mailing tubes, wrapped them in brown paper, and tied them up with string over the crotches of my boyfriend Floyd, my friend Brian and myself. For the record, our brown paper packages measured nine inches long and would have cost at least four bucks to ship. We arrive at the theater in time for the costume judging, hosted by none other than Charmian Carr, the original Liesl in the film, who is now like 56 going on 57 and, I must say, still a complete babe. She cheerfully greets some Hitler jugend, a couple of Baroness Schraeders in drag and some women dressed as the Alps before the three of us step up on stage and shove our brown paper packages in her direction. "These are a few of my favorite things," I tell her. She declines to hold my package but does let me squeeze the Charmian. We win first prize. Singing along with the subtitles is great fun, although I never realized just how many choruses of "Do Re Mi" the Von Trapp children sing until I had to do it myself. But the chief pleasure comes from yelling back at the screen. As each of the children exit during "So Long, Farewell" we scream, "You are the weakest link. Goodbye." As the nuns gather behind a grill to watch Maria get married we shout "Free the Nuns!" I lose complete control. For someone who mumbles to himself, the opportunity to say whatever I want for three hours is cathartic. It's like primal scream therapy. I get into some kind of zone and start a stream-of-consciousness rant, providing the interior monologue for the characters. The Mother Abbess asks, "Maria what is it you cahn't face?" and I shout back, "Who are you calling a cahntface?" Maria kisses the Captain and I say, "Oooh, that's not how the Mother Abbess does it." Maria sings to him that she must have done something good to deserve the Captain, and I shout "And now I wanna do something bad!" I'm hoarse by evening's end. But yelling at the screen also makes me realize how little sense The Sound of Music actually makes. For instance, when Maria sings to the Captain, "Somewhere in my youth, or childhood..." the woman in front of me asks, "What's the difference?" And anyone who's looked at map knows that if the Von Trapps had actually climbed ev'ry mountain out of Salzburg they would have come down the other side of the Alps right into Nazi Germany. But let's face it, very little makes sense in the real world today either, so I've decided that shouting and singing are as healthy a response as any. Sure, yelling at The Sound of Music feels good, but screaming at the nightly news feels even better. Talk about therapy. And whenever the newscasters talk about the Taliban, I don't resist the temptation to suddenly transform into Harry Belafonte and sing "Hey, Mistah Taliban, tally me ba-na-na..." I've even got a little calypso dance I do. Stupid? You bet. But singing is definitely one of my favorite things and after doing it, like the song says, "then I don't feel so bad." So how do you solve a problem like Bin Laden? I don't know, but in the meantime I'm going to cope with the sound of music...and lots of shouting. And that, my friends, is The Gospel According to Marc. Marc Acito fully intends to follow every rainbow till he finds his dream. You can e-mail him at MarcAcito@home.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 15, November 21, 2001 |