A Love Song for Anyone Who Tries
I’m a little obsessed with Hadestown.
I haven’t seen it yet, but I will the first chance I get. Too bad I didn’t get tickets before it won Best Musical.
Hadestown is a retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It began as a concept album in 2010. It opened off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop in 2016, moved on to Edmonton and London in 2017 and 2018, and opened on Broadway in March of this year.
Hadestown won eight of its 14 nominations at this year’s Tony Awards.
My fascination is with the story and music. Hadestown is tragic—a story of death, and darkness, of doubt, and failure. It is also a love song and a story of hope—a reminder that spring will return even after the devastating death that comes in the wintertime.
Set in an undefined kind of depression era, post-apocalyptic place, with a New Orleans vibe, the music is lively and haunting at the same time. In addition to Orpheus and Eurydice, characters include the three fates, Hermes, Hades, and his wife Persephone. Persephone must live six months of every year “way down under the ground” with Hades. As the goddess of spring, she spends the other six months of the year “living it up on top” and making sure that the world comes back to life in the spring and summertime.
Reduced to its simplest version, Hades convinces Eurydice to sign her life away and he takes her to Hadestown. Orpheus vows to bring her back and makes the difficult journey to Hadestown on his own. Eventually, Hades allows Orpheus to take Eurydice home provided he does not look back to see if she is following behind him. In the end, overcome by doubt, he turns to make sure she is there, and in that moment, she is lost forever.
In the end, Hermes begins to tell the story again. Orpheus’s gift, he insists, is to “make you see how the world could be in spite of the way that it is.” He calls the story, “a love song for anyone who tries.”
Anyone who tries.
We all experience loss. Pain and grief are part of the human experience. Doubt and fear our next-door neighbors.
Maybe that’s what’s wrong with our world today? Fear of change. Fear of those different from us. Doubt about who are.
“Why We Build the Wall” is a haunting call and response sung by Hades to his laborers in Hadestown. In his earth rattling bass voice, he sings the question:
Why do we build the wall?
My children, my children
Why do we build the wall?
Because we have and they have not!
Because they want what we have got!
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
Turning to Google for the exact lyrics, I had to laugh. For good or for bad, Google knows me so well, and had already made the same connections I did. Immediately above the lyrics was an ad for the website webuildthewall.us. “Read more about how you can help build the Trump Wall,” it read. “Help secure our border today. “
Because we have and they have not!
Because they want what we have got!
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
At the heart of CAMP Rehoboth, there has always been the understanding that our mission was to break down the walls—real and imagined—that separate us from one another. We have always believed that neighbor to neighbor, as we get to know each other, we discover the commonality we share as human beings.
There are multiple ways to construct a wall—to separate ourselves from others and from the world around us.
A closet is a wall. A way of hiding ourselves from others. Politics, religion, economic status, race, gender identity, and sexual orientation allow us to label one another, and in the process create invisible barriers for those who are not like us.
CAMP Rehoboth was founded in 1990, at a time when our friends and loved ones were dying from AIDS at a terrifying rate. It seemed an unstoppable road to hell. Our hearts were wounded with each loss. The ranks of our very earliest CAMP Rehoboth supporters were thinned at an unrelenting pace.
We were tempted in those days to give in to pain, despair, and heartache. Instead, our generation learned how to be caregivers, advocates, protesters, and fundraisers. Instead of giving up we rose up and did what needed to be done.
Death is an ever-present part of human life. We still find a way to laugh, and to love, and to sing, and to dance. We still find a way to hope.
Maybe we do all of that because death is an ever-present part of human life? Our finite lives push us to accomplish the impossible.
Orpheus takes the road to hell to find Eurydice and bring her back to life. He almost succeeds.
The CAMP Rehoboth vision statement says, “We create proud and safe communities where gender identity and sexual orientation are respected.” As an LGBTQ organization, that language is appropriate. Behind it is a larger vision—a world vision—that all people are to be respected. A vision that echoes our mission of cooperation and understanding for all people.
Because it feels like an impossible dream is not reason to give up. Nor is failure.
The future of this planet and people who live on it is built on cooperation and understanding. It will come if we build relationships and not walls. It will come if we put our creative minds together to solve the problems the world faces.
On a sunny day there was a railroad car
And a lady stepping off a train
Everybody looked and everybody saw
That spring had come again
With a love song
With a tale of a love that never dies
With a love song
For anyone who tries.▼
Murray Archibald is an artist, CAMP Rehoboth Co-Founder, and longtime President of the CAMP Rehoboth Board of Directors. He is currently serving as CAMP Rehoboth Interim Executive Director and Editor in Chief of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. Email Murray at murray@camprehoboth.com
© Song lyrics from Hadestown are property and copyright of their owners.
Photo by Chayenne Tessari Zanol on Unsplash.com