He Could Go and He Could Shine

At 9.45am I realized Erdman has the oddest hours in the world. They close at 9.30 and open again at 10 for lunch. And God, I have to catch a train at 10.15.

At 10.14 I was leaning against the door on the R5 train (“Do NOT lean on doors, at all time,” it says), breathing, empty stomached but still right on schedule. My bus leaves Philly at 11.

If you were in the position to advise a college student trying to make the 3-transfer 2.5 hour trip to New York for her favorite Broadway musical, tell her “don’t ever count on SEPTA for punctuality.” At least that’s what I told myself as I sprinted across Market East Station on 5-inch heels and earphones and a tote bag at 10.58. My iPod shuffled to “Angry Dance” in the Billy Elliot Original Cast Recording. I considered it a sympathy nod from the universe.

I made the bus anyway.

New York City was gorgeous even in its dingy side streets and subway stations that smelt like piss half the time. I was no longer starry eyed and delusional when it comes to Manhattan, too many weekends spent wandering the bus lines when the E stopped weaving across town, other night trains emptied and filled up again, oblivious of morning light fracturing overhead.

But New York and its obnoxiousness, its loud mornings, and cabs that swerved as if auditioning in front of an invisible action movie casting agent. New York and people grabbing your hands in the subway asking if this train went to 34^th station and yes it did and you pretended to be a New Yorker because it felt like a dream for a second. I didn’t think I would ever get over how strange, how superficial, and how perfect this city was.

I could continue to moon over Broadway theaters and how I looked like a complete tourist even though I knew the midtown stores and buildings by heart. I could tell you how I took a photo of every theater I passed on the way to Imperial Theater (from 45^th and 8^th I could see Al Hirschfield where I’m going on Jan. 22 to see “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying”) and sent them to all my friends. They were probably already sick of Broadway without ever setting foot there. I was better at obsessing over something than actually drawing people to it. “What the hell is wrong with expressing yourself?”

Perhaps I should talk about Billy Elliot.

Billy grows up in a mining town in a strike against Margaret Thatcher’s government when she decided to shut down coal mines across Great Britain. Billy dances. Ignoring the fact that he’s trained in modern ballet and does a tap number right before intermission, “Angry Dance” has the kind of raw intensity that makes your nails tingle and throws the audience on their feet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4foXk4hhbk

My favorite songs, though, turned out not to be “Electricity,” the signature piece of the musical, nor “The Letter,” the reprised number. I adored “Grandma’s Song” and “He Could Be a Star.”

“Grandma’s Song” is the lyrical autobiography of Billy’s grandmother (a character barely explored in the movie). During the number, she recalled her marriage with Billy’s granddad, completed with domestic violence (“He’d swing, and he rarely missed), happier time (“But we were free, for an hour or three, from the people we had to be”), and when reality crashed back in (“But in the morning, we were sober”).

There was laughter at the last line, sure. But she would pause, and sing it again, and suddenly it means something else entirely and the theater went quiet. She doesn’t just want to live “without the help of men,” but she never wants to wake up, never wants to be “the person she has to be.” It’s not that the moment ties up nicely with “The Letter” from Billy’s mom in which she asks him to “always be true to [himself]” and Billy’s exclamation “and I am free” in “Electricity.” Grandma reminded too well that I was technically “over the hill” in college, and at our age, we tended to think our decisions right after graduation meant everything.

That’s what Billy Elliot does to me. I could laugh and tear up and feel apprehension settle at the pit of my stomach, all in the time span of two minutes.

“He Could Be a Star” starts with Billy’s father, Jackie Elliot, returning to work amidst the strike (his son Tony being the leader of the union workers, no less). “I need to give the kid a future; I need to look at him in the eyes.” Against Tony’s political persuasion, the usually grumbling Jackie raises his voice to a heart breaking note “He could be a star for all we know. We don’t know how far he can go.” The tear-jerking quality of Billy lies in moments like this, the hopeful innocence of a boy’s dream coupled with the gripping reality that limits it.

Somewhere in the middle of the song, the guy behind me asked his friend (very loudly, may I add): “So is this musical about the kid or about communism?” Long story short, the miners and an unexpected policeman donated all the money they had for Billy to audition in London. Perhaps this moment means differently for someone who grew up in the remnants of a communist ideology, but “All for one, one for all” hits me harder than anything else in this song. Behind the silly economic policies, behind the idealistic expectations of human nature, behind all the scare tactics and politics, the heartbreaking core of communism is exactly that. “We will give all that we can give. Because he will go and he will shine.”

Billy Elliot is coming to Philadelphia in November and I will be in front of Residential Life Office at Bryn Mawr at 10am on October 31 trying to buy discount tickets. For another glorious 150 minutes, sobriety shall have no place in my life. A coal-stained boy shall dream and these leaden bodies shall fly.

And suddenly I’m flying, flying like a bird, like the electricity. And I’m free. I’m free.