Caroline, or Change

 I follow the bouncing ball of what I do. In August I built videos of a dozen poems for my book launch in October. In September I go back into my Charlotte and Wilbur.

It's time to find the music. As dedicated readers of this blog know well--a warm late-summer eve to you, aunt Misty and uncle Don--collaboration on my musicals hasn't come easily. Not because I haven't wanted it, but because I've not known how to find it in ways that leave everybody satisfied, and paid for their work. 

I could attempt to write the music myself, as I did for Oak Floors!, and give it to an arranger later. Just in cause I go that route again, this morning I noodled at the keyboard and found a musical figure that sort of worked right off the top of the show, a scene in which everyone wonders, "Where's Papa going with that ax?"

Then I read the first act of Caroline, or Change, book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, music by Jeanine Tesori. Let me quote the open stage direction: "Caroline, a maid, in the basement of the Gellmans' house [in Lake Charles, Louisiana, 1962-63]. She's doing the laundry, sorting the clothes." In the scene, Caroline, a radio, a washer, a dryer, and a young boy share the function of teaching us who and where they are, what's driving Caroline's life, and what problems she, and the boy, have to overcome.

I haven't heard the music yet, but Spotify, here I come.

Which is to say, music for Charlotte and Wilbur needs a vision I'm not sure I can provide.