This Changes Everything
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CHAPTER INTERLUDE X
Excerpts from the Chief Communicator’s Occasional Log, Being Changed "For Good"
April 15, 2013
The Many Worlds Collective chooses me, Clara Ackerman Branon, Ph.D., age 58 in late 2012, to be the first public contact spokesperson. I'm also the main liaison, communicator and ongoing connection among the humans. I hold this post of “Chief Communicator,” labeled by my Chief Media Contact, Esperanza Enlaces, for almost 30 years (2012 – 2040).
I must make an aside, here, to explain my usual state of mind about being a Spanner and being the Chief Communicator. Those of you reading this who are Spanners or children of Spanners and who have knowledge of Western musical theater productions (then called “Broadway musicals” because they are staged and made popular first by being in theaters on one street, Broadway, in one city in the USA, New York City), may recognize these lyrics, the beauty and bittersweetness of the sentiment, as I refer to them, below.
This song, "For Good," and its lyrics run through my mind frequently. I find myself humming it and singing what I remember best of it to myself. Sometimes I sing lines with others who know them as we struggle through the first decades of trying to live, ever-changed, by ongoing contact with many worlds’ beings.
Some say I change the most; I beg to differ. We are ALL changed, and in some ways, I may change the least at first, since I am kind of expecting it all.
The two characters who sing this song, from the musical, Wicked, are eventually known to their communities as “Glinda, ‘the Good’” and “Elphaba, ‘the Wicked.’” Both are “witches” living in an imaginary land called “Oz,” created first by the author, L. Frank Baum (an earlier century’s “Spanner,” of sorts, since he publishes his first “Oz” book in 1900) and later re-conceived. Gregory MacGuire writes a new backstory for these witches and Oz. Maguire’s book becomes the musical, Wicked, which premieres in 2003 and continues to run for many years in theaters all around the world.
My sister, Cassie, and one of my oldest and dearest friends, Franco, introduce me to this musical; Franco and I see it together. Cassie gives me the CD of the music. If you are not familiar with it, try to get a version of “For Good” as sung by its characters’ originators, Kristin Chenoweth (as Glinda) and Idina Menzel (as Elphaba), either on the CD or somewhere online, with whatever is the current incarnation of “Youtube.” Or, some other version, even in karaoke, will do.
“For Good” occurs near the middle of the play, after many encounters, experiences of both friendship and conflict, between these two main characters. For me, this song seems to capture, lyrically and melodically as well as emotionally, how so many Spanners and perhaps the individual beings who are our contacts from the Many Worlds Collective feel about our three decades of public encounters, the friendships and conflicts among us and between us. You decide which group (Earth’s Spanners or the MWC) is represented by which witch….
[Copyright 2002, Wicked, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman. Based on the Gregory Maguire novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995), a parallel novel of the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, and L. Frank Baum's classic story. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).]