To put it into perspective, the same number of people texted me asking if I was okay when William Finn died as they did when I was a single mile away from the evacuation zone of the worst fires in LA history.
I found out while I was at work. I work in service, and I managed to stay professional, to swallow my emotions, for a grand total of ten minutes before a customer was slightly mean to me, and I immediately broke down crying. It’s embarrassing to explain to all the kind people who tried to comfort me that, actually, it wasn’t really the angry, unforgiving customer that had caused this reaction, but the death of a man in his seventies who I had never met.
The thing is, I can’t totally explain why this struck such a blow to my foundations. I knew he wasn’t young. I knew, to some extent, that his health was failing. And, once again, I didn’t know him. But I think he’s the reason I know myself.
As a lonely high school student with no real sense of my own identity, I found myself and the community I desperately needed in the very queer and very Jewish online fandom that formed around the 2016 Lincoln Center revival of Falsettos. My connection to Judaism, my gender and sexual identities, they all trace back to what I learned from that community.
As a lost college student slipping into deeper and deeper depression, my joy revolved around an obsession with the New York theatre scene that had its roots firmly embedded in the deep dives I had taken into William Finn’s works and the history that surrounded them.
As an aimless college dropout, I remembered the musical theatre class I had taken with In Trousers’ own Alison Fraser, the lifetime of musical theatre that I had done with the person who had introduced me to Falsettos in the first place, the way it felt to perform, and especially the way it felt to perform a work of genius like Finn’s songs. I auditioned for musical theatre school with “Love Me For What I Am,” from the original 1979 version of In Trousers.
As a frustrated musical theatre student, whenever I felt my love for the artform slipping away, as it can when a passion becomes an obligation–when your favorite songs become graded assignments, and your excited analysis becomes an essay with a deadline–it was Finn’s work that reignited that fire.
No other body of work has embedded itself so deeply in my life and my soul as William Finn’s. None have felt so intertwined with my being, and with the trajectory of my life.
I have, over the years, met most of the 2016 Broadway cast, flown cross-country to see a production of A New Brain, and of course made everyone in my university class groan over and over again by bringing up Falsettos for the thousandth time (I swear it was just relevant a lot). I could tell a hundred stories of friendships and accomplishments and survival that only happened because of the inspiration brought by the songs and stories of William Finn. They are a part of me. Irreversibly so. What breaks my heart, what will never stop breaking my heart, is that I never got to tell him any of those stories. That I never got to thank him for altering my brain chemistry–for changing my life.
I hope he knew anyway. I hope today, and will always hope, that he knew how much his art meant to so many people. People who felt seen, maybe for the first time–-people who found community when they thought they had none–-people who found themselves and found their way–-because of his shows, his music, his characters. I hope he knew that his bravery and boldness, the stories he chose to spotlight, changed Broadway, and by extension the entire media landscape, forever. I don’t think he gets enough credit for that. But I hope he knew how true it was, and how true it remains.
The grief I feel today is bigger than it has any right to be. As I sit here writing this eulogy for someone who never knew I existed, trying to put into words everything these shows have meant to me over the years–-as Mr. Bungee rides around my TV screen on a Razor scooter, courtesy of the bootleg recording of the Encores! Production of A New Brain–-as I try to come up with a way to feel okay-–to create something that can somehow honor his tremendous legacy-–the one thing I keep coming back to is the most cliched conclusion possible. That the source of this grief is a wellspring of immense gratitude that I will never be able to fully express. But I’ll try my best. In whatever ways I can.
And I’ll start here. Sharing these stupid, complicated, unexplainable feelings with whoever is willing to read it. I’ll start here. With a deep, emphatic thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Finn. For getting me here. For making me who I am. Thank you.
Here's a close up of my deconstructing the cube page if anyone wants to take a crack at building it yourself. Mines made out of wood scraps.
How I've broken it down was into directions (the first time we see it, the left side is 'east' and the right side is 'west'). You get it. Every block was assigned a letter so I could put it back perfectly every time cause so many of the blocks look the same but have a very slight size difference that throws the whole thing off if placed elsewhere.
The scale is not completely jacked beyond comprehension, but I started with one block and scaled the whole thing around that, so I really had no idea how big it would actually be. Mine is 7 by 6 inches.
Honestly looking at it now, idk how I did it.
It was mostly a process of fuck around and find out. I needed to use every version and bootleg I could to get every angle and see all the details and even then, I'm still confused.
To more or less ruin the illusion, there's a third triangle that doesn't fit anywhere and Whizzer's headstone replaced two blocks [H and I]. So it either hangs out behind the cube or inside the pocket of space it has.
The whole thing I want to say took me like a week of sawing and sanding wood. (Minus the painting). But I was really determined to get it done before my interest wavered the slightest. Not that it did of course, I was eager to get to work on my next Falsettos-related project. [A hand carved chessboard set] if y'all want to see that, I'll be happy to show you.
