Originally published April 28, 2023
Briefly, to glimpse the set which he had only seen on screens in the lobby, Arthur eased open the mezzanine door. The harmony was something which did not feel like it had a direction. It felt surer of itself than any harmony, and it stayed sure, moving in simultaneous melody for its own sake. To shake its bones. Strings and woodwinds suspended Arthur in the doorway, and he looked upon the set. Massive oak heaved across the stage, sloping down in the center to reveal a star-lit sky. It was woodland, under the moon. Masses dressed in black and green, moving slowly on the chorus floor as harmony swelled beneath them. And soon they joined in, forty voices bathing the music in more music. Arthur fell through the moon at the sound of this chorus, re-emerging in a dark wood that he felt immediately acquainted with. It was dusk and the pot was inside boiling. He was on the outside, all dew and bark.
But the mezzanine door generated a shaft of light. It illuminated the orchestra as something human, something organized and vulnerable to disturbance. Though the light beam was narrow, patient brass players looked up in unison. The stage crew in the front rows turned too, thinking there was something wrong with the lighting. But it was Arthur, enraptured in the forest of his mind, in the eternity of harmony, in the strength and determinism of the set-builders, whose union could propel them to the songworld while ensuring the bills would be paid. For Arthur, the bills would be paid this time. But after that flash of light in the mezzanine, it occurred to him this may be the last bill paid.
All the while on the way home, he suffered nervously. He knew he could cry on the subway, and, while he got pitying looks, he was in the safety of numbers. The fear that New Yorkers have of violating other peoples’ personal space, that which continued to alienate him, he was at once grateful for. They let him cry like they let everyone else suffer. The theater itself was a vehicle of suffering; in the 1960s it displaced thousands, and while people say the building is haunted by its former stars, Arthur wondered why anyone who could come back from the dead would choose to haunt their workplace. He knew it was those who haunted their homes. Those ghosts looked on to the magnificent set as well, and while he did not know if they accepted their fate beyond the grave, he knew at once that, if he was fired for that flash of light, the company couldn’t take from him anywhere near what it had taken from countless others before.
And so he slept well when he got home, and while the beam of light was discovered, its perpetrator was not. They assumed it was one of the countless ghosts, those who they said once walked and sang these very stages. Lived their life in their costumes, spoke their various languages. And spoke now only in light.