Working on a Song
Page 8
This was always my favorite for poetry. The stone by stone / row by row lines were hard-won. I was stuck on that verse for weeks at home in Vermont. I walked outside in despair, into the neighbor’s woods, and the lines came while I walked. Ultimately, though, they didn’t survive in the theater show, because once I reframed the la la melody as the forgotten love song of the gods, it felt essential that their meaning remain consistent. In the version above, the la las seem to become the sound of the mindless workers, the song of Hades’s compulsion—not the song that’s going to bring the world back into tune.
London & Broadway
In an effort to give a consistent meaning to the choruses, I rewrote the verses for London. There, they were similar to Broadway, with one major distinction—they were written in the past tense. Ken, with his dramaturgical focus on change and arc, had been craving more clarity around “the way the world was” versus “the way the world is now.” Bringing Orpheus’s present-day observations into the present tense, he thought, would help with that. I resisted for a time because any tense change messed with the rhymes, especially the internal ones. But I saw Ken’s point, and for Broadway I made the switch.
I also tried for a long time to bring home an alternate version of the first verse. If you saw the show on Broadway in early previews, you’d have heard this on a few nights:
Orpheus: But for half of the year, with Persephone gone / In the dark of the mine he is trying to fill / The hole that his lover has left in his arms / With the silver and gold / He can have and hold / Not half, but whole / All to himself
To me, it expressed an ineffable truth about Hades, compulsive capitalism, the unslakable thirst for more. Hades’s separation from Persephone—the woman he loves but can never fully possess—leaves a hole in his heart. He tries to fill the hole with material wealth and industry, but this is impossible. He is filling a hole that will never be filled was a line I attempted in “Epic III,” and in fact this whole image was meant to tie into a revised version of “Epic III” that I couldn’t finish in time for opening night. I always found the “Epics” exceedingly hard to write, because of the long lyric lines, the internal rhymes, the metaphors, and above all, the pressure I felt for Orpheus to be “the world’s greatest poet.” There were years of struggle with these songs, and the beginning of every dramaturgical meeting went like this: “Anaïs, what’s your priority?” Me: “Rewrite the ‘Epics.’” Team Dramaturgy: “You know, the ‘Epics’ are fine, but you really should look at (such and such) . . .”
CHANT
Workers & Fates
Oh, keep your head, keep your head low (kkh!)
Oh, you gotta keep your head low (kkh!)
If you wanna keep your head (huh! kkh!)
Oh, you gotta keep your head low
Keep your head, keep your head low (kkh!)
Oh, you gotta keep your head low (kkh!)
If you wanna keep your head (huh! kkh!)
Oh, you gotta keep your head
Persephone
In the coldest time of year
Why is it so hot down here?
Hotter than a crucible
It ain’t right and it ain’t natural
Hades
Lover, you were gone so long
Lover, I was lonesome
So I built a foundry
In the ground beneath your feet
Here I fashioned things of steel
Oil drums and automobiles
And then I kept that furnace fed
With the fossils of the dead
Lover, when you feel that fire
Think of it as my desire
Think of it as my desire for you
Orpheus
La la, la la, la la la la la
La la, la la, la la la la la
Laaaaaaa, la la la la la
Laaaaaaa, la la la la la
La, la, la la la la la la
La la la la la la
La la la la la la
La la la la la la la . . .
Workers & Fates
Oh, keep your head, keep your head low . . .
Eurydice (to Hermes)
Is it finished?
Hermes
Not yet
Eurydice
Is he always like this?
Looking high and looking low
For the food and firewood I know
We need to find and I am
Keeping one eye on the sky and
Trying to trust
That the song he’s working on is gonna
Shelter us
From the wind, the wind, the wind
Workers & Fates
Aooh! Kkh!
Aooh! Huh! Kkh!
Persephone
In the darkest time of year
Why is it so bright down here?
Brighter than a carnival
It ain’t right and it ain’t natural
Hades
Lover, you were gone so long
Lover, I was lonesome
So I laid a power grid
In the ground on which you stood
And wasn’t it electrifying?
When I made the neon shine
Silver screen, cathode ray
Brighter than the light of day
Lover, when you see that glare
Think of it as my despair
Think of it as my despair for you
Orpheus
They can’t find the tune
Hermes
Orpheus . . .
Orpheus
They can’t feel the rhythm
Hermes
Orpheus!
Orpheus
King Hades is deafened
By a river of stone
Hermes
Poor boy working on a song
Orpheus
And Lady Persephone’s blinded
By a river of wine
Living in an oblivion
Hermes
He did not see the storm coming on
Fates
Ooooh . . .
Orpheus
His black gold flows
In the world down below
And her dark clouds roll
In the one up above
Hermes
Look up!
Workers
Keep your head low . . .
Orpheus
And that is the reason we’re on this road
And the seasons are wrong
And the wind is so strong
That’s why times are so hard
It’s because of the gods
The gods have forgotten the song of their love!
Singing la la la la la la la . . .
Workers & Fates
Oh, keep your head, keep your head low . . .
Eurydice
Looking low and looking high
Fates
There is no food left to find
It’s hard enough to feed yourself
Let alone somebody else
Eurydice
I’m trying to believe
That the song he’s working on is gonna
Harbor me
From the wind, the wind, the wind
Fates
Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh . . .
Hermes
Eurydice was a hungry young girl
Eurydice (to Fates)
Give that back!
Hermes
She was no stranger to the wind
Eurydice
It’s everything we have!
Hermes
But she had not seen nothing
Eurydice
Orpheus!
Hermes
Like the mighty storm she got caught in
Eurydice
Orpheus!!!
Shelter us!
Hermes
Only took a minute
Eurydice
Harbor me!
Hermes
But the wrath of the gods was in it
Persephone
Every year it’s getting worse
Hadestown, hell on earth!
Did you think I’d be impressed
With this neon necropolis?
Lover, what have you become?
Coal cars and oil drums
Warehouse walls and factory floors
I don’t know you anymore
And in the meantime up above
The harvest dies and people starve
Oceans rise and overflow
It ain’t right and it ain’t natural
Hades
Lover, everything I do
I do it for the love of you
If you don’t even want my love
I’ll give it to someone who does
Someone grateful for her fate
Someone who appreciates
The comforts of a gilded cage
And doesn’t try to fly away
The moment Mother Nature calls
Someone who could love these walls
That hold her close and keep her safe
And think of them as my embrace
Workers & Fates
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Orpheus
Singing la la la la la la la
Eurydice
Shelter us!
Hades
Think of them as my embrace
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Orpheus
La la la la la la
Eurydice
Harbor me!
Hades (to Eurydice)
Think of them as my embrace . . . of you
Notes on “Chant”
Off-Broadway
“Chant” was one of the first “new” songs I wrote for Hadestown after the studio album era. At first it simply consisted of the chant itself (Keep your head low) and the Hades and Persephone verses (In the coldest time of year . . . / Lover, you were gone so long . . .), which changed very little over the years. Rachel was excited early on by the potential of both “Chant” and “Chant Reprise” to function as “set pieces” that allowed us to check in with multiple characters at once and feel their stories interlock, machinelike. At her urging, I added interludes featuring Orpheus and Eurydice. It always felt right to me for Orpheus and Eurydice to appear twice: he working on his song, she progressively more frustrated as the weather worsens. The language of those interludes, though, changed in every single production we did. Off-Broadway, Orpheus spoke very briefly:
Orpheus: I’ll sing a song of a love gone wrong
Hermes: A love gone wrong, alright! Every year they had this fight!
Orpheus: Singing la la la la la la la . . .
Orpheus: A mighty king, a mighty queen
Hermes: This year their fighting made the mightiest storm you ever seen!
Orpheus: Singing la la la la la la la . . .
Eurydice’s interludes went like this:
Eurydice: Lover, while you sing your song / Winter is a-comin’ on / See, I’m stacking firewood / See, I’m putting by some food / Orpheus! / All the pretty songs you sing ain’t gonna / Shelter us! / From the wind, the wind, the wind
Eurydice: While my lover sings his song / Everything I’ve saved is gone / Nothing left up on the shelf / Fire ain’t gonna light itself / Now I see / All the pretty songs he sings ain’t gonna / Harbor me / From the wind, the wind, the wind
Off-Broadway, the “storm” sequence was wordless, but featured the Fates singing a wind-swept oooh melody and performing what Rachel and David called, in every incarnation, the “Coat Ballet”—a sequence in which the Fates embody the elements, stripping Eurydice of her coat and belongings.
Edmonton
At the Citadel, Orpheus’s interludes remained unchanged, but I took Eurydice’s back to the drawing board. Team Dramaturgy would often ask, seder-style: “What makes this day (or season, or year) different from all others?” In Edmonton, I wanted to make it explicit that what we were dealing with aboveground was not merely a change of seasons, but a climate in chaos. So while our off-Broadway Eurydice sang of preparing for winter, our Edmonton Eurydice described unnatural weather events:
Eurydice: Lover, do you hear that sound? / Now the wind is all around
Spinning every weathervane / You said it would never change . . .
Eurydice: Lover, can you hear me now? / Answer if you can somehow
Orpheus, in all my years / Never seen a storm like this . . .
The storm sequence itself still felt abstract, so I added the detailed narration by Hermes that culminates in: Only took a minute / But the wrath of the gods was in it!
London
In London I put Orpheus’s interludes on the table. I was trying to illustrate—with many stanzas of language—the poet hard at work on his “Epic.” His first London interlude went like this:
Orpheus: He put trains on the tracks, grease on the skids / Smoke in the stacks of his factories / But whatever he did, he could never be rid / Of the doubt and the dread that his lover would leave / In the back of his mind was an engine that whined / Ringing in the king’s ears, spinning wheels, grinding gears / Till he fell out of tune and he fell out of time / With the song he once knew but could no longer hear / Singing la la la la la la la . . .
His second interlude was twice as long as the one on Broadway, and began with this stanza:
Orpheus: He fell out of time, out of rhyme, out of rhythm / He kept the queen with him and the winter dragged on / And sometimes he’d come aboveground and he’d summon / Her down, before summer was meant to be done . . .
Eurydice’s interludes were similar to those in Edmonton, but in London we’d hung a blazing lantern on the phrase working on a song, so they began this way:
Eurydice: While you’re working on your song / There’s a storm a-comin’ on . . .
There was also this very pointed exchange with Orpheus:
Eurydice (to Orpheus): Is it finished?
Orpheus: Not yet
Eurydice: Finish it!
Broadway
The accumulating Orpheus language gave us a real-time glimpse of the poet at work, but in the “set piece” frenzy that is “Chant,” the content of the lines was lost. The song felt fatiguing. Also, I began to truly suspect that no amount of poetic imagery or internal rhyming prowess was going to make us fall in love with Orpheus. It was the naive, heart-on-the-sleeve beauty of his singing alone that might move us. Similarly, it wasn’t wordsmithery that was going to conquer the heart of Hades, but the wordless gift of the forgotten melody of his own song. For Broadway I tried to roll back Orpheus’s lyricism, and allow him instead to explore his simple musical gifts—hence, the expanded la la melody. Allowing Hermes to approach him, unheard—Orpheus—Orpheus!—again depicted him as a boy lost in his own world.
As for Eurydice, Ken mentioned in the lead-up to Broadway that he wished she would fight a little harder for the relationship, not give up on Orpheus so quickly. That made sense to me, and I rewrote her interludes to in
clude language about her “trying to trust” and “trying to believe” in Orpheus and his song. I reassigned her darkest thoughts (It’s hard enough to feed yourself / Let alone somebody else) to the Fates, as the voices in her head. I also gave her some verbal lines (Give that back! / It’s everything we have . . .) to hurl at the Fates during the Coat Ballet. Rachel was in support of any language that might provide access (a favorite word of hers) to Eurydice during her moment of crisis, and it had the added benefit of painting a less victim-y portrait.
HEY, LITTLE SONGBIRD
Hades
Hey, little songbird, give me a song
I’m a busy man and I can’t stay long
I’ve got clients to call, I’ve got orders to fill
I’ve got walls to build, I’ve got riots to quell
And they’re giving me hell back in Hades
Hey, little songbird, cat got your tongue?
Always a pity for one so pretty and young
When poverty comes to clip your wings
And knock the wind right out of your lungs
Hey, nobody sings on empty
Eurydice
Strange is the call of this strange man
I wanna fly down and feed at his hand
I want a nice soft place to land