A Chorus Line Musical Quotes

Everyone knows that quote because of the Doors." Jace looked at her blankly. "The Doors. They were a band." "If you say so," he said. "I suppose you don't have much time for enjoying music," Clary said, thinking of Simon, for whom music was his entire life, "in your line of work." He shrugged. "Maybe the occasional wailing chorus of the damned.

A map has no vocabulary, no lexicon of precise meanings. It communicates in lines, hues, tones, coded symbols, and empty spaces, much like music. Nor does a map have its own voice. It is many-tongued, a chorus reciting centuries of accumulated knowledge in echoed chants. A map provides no answers. It only suggests where to look: Discover this, reexamine that, put one thing in relation to another, orient yourself, begin here... Sometimes a map speaks in terms of physical geography, but just as often it muses on the jagged terrain of the heart, the distant vistas of memory, or the fantastic landscapes of dreams.

You’re sure you want to do this,” Galen says, eyeing me like I’ve grown a tiara of snakes on my head. “Absolutely.” I unstrap the four-hundred-dollar silver heels and spike them into the sand. When he starts unraveling his tie, I throw out my hand. “No! Leave it. Leave everything on.” Galen frowns. “Rachel would kill us both. In our sleep. She would torture us first.” “This is our prom night. Rachel would want us to enjoy ourselves.” I pull the thousand-or-so bobby pins from my hair and toss them in the sand. Really, both of us are right. She would want us to be happy. But she would also want us to stay in our designer clothes. Leaning over, I shake my head like a wet dog, dispelling the magic of hairspray. Tossing my hair back, I look at Galen. His crooked smile almost melts me where I stand. I’m just glad to see a smile on his face at all. The last six months have been rough. “Your mother will want pictures,” he tells me. “And what will she do with pictures? There aren’t exactly picture frames in the Royal Caverns.” Mom’s decision to mate with Grom and live as his queen didn’t surprise me. After all, I am eighteen years old, an adult, and can take care of myself. Besides, she’s just a swim away. “She keeps picture frames at her house though. She could still enjoy them while she and Grom come to shore to-“ “Okay, ew. Don’t say it. That’s where I draw the line.” Galen laughs and takes off his shoes. I forget all about Mom and Grom. Galen, barefoot in the sand, wearing an Armani tux. What more could a girl ask for? “Don’t look at me like that, angelfish,” he says, his voice husky. “Disappointing your grandfather is the last thing I want to do.” My stomach cartwheels. Swallowing doesn’t help. “I can’t admire you, even from afar?” I can’t quite squeeze enough innocence in there to make it believable, to make it sound like I wasn’t thinking the same thing he was. Clearing his throat, he nods. “Let’s get on with this.” He closes the distance between us, making foot-size potholes with his stride. Grabbing my hand, he pulls me to the water. At the edge of the wet sand, just out of reach of the most ambitious wave, we stop. “You’re sure?” he says again. “More than sure,” I tell him, giddiness swimming through my veins like a sneaking eel. Images of the conference center downtown spring up in my mind. Red and white balloons, streamers, a loud, cheesy DJ yelling over the starting chorus of the next song. Kids grinding against one another on the dance floor to lure the chaperones’ attention away from a punch bowl just waiting to be spiked. Dresses spilling over with skin, matching corsages, awkward gaits due to six-inch heels. The prom Chloe and I dreamed of. But the memories I wanted to make at that prom died with Chloe. There could never be any joy in that prom without her. I couldn’t walk through those doors and not feel that something was missing. A big something. No, this is where I belong now. No balloons, no loud music, no loaded punch bowl. Just the quiet and the beach and Galen. This is my new prom. And for some reason, I think Chloe would approve.

Relly fired off the opening riff. Butt laid down the beat, old doom and new joy mixed together. "I wait till I, like fire, shall rise," Jerod sang. And then again, louder, wailing sure and true. I was the last one to join in. I had a bass line all wroked out, of course. I'd been waiting weeks for this momment. My fingers colosed on the strings, pressed them hard to the frets. Butt and Relly were locked in, repeating the four-bar intro. Louder and louder, fierce as a war cry. "Ok," I whispered into the pounding noise. I joined in, doubling Relly at first, then splitting off to coil our riffs together. It was great, it was huge, it was endless. The song rose, churning and sucking everything in like a cyclone. "The will my voice in great goodbyes," Jerod screamed from the speakers. "Join to the chorus of the skies." Silence was inside me, riding the Ghost Metal tornado. Right at the center, at the heart of the song. I didn't need a voice. I had a bass. I didn't need to hear myself talk or sing. Jerod could make the words for me. Or maybe it was Silence herself, pouring out through the PA system. Either way, any way, They were my words. And all the world would hear them.

How To Save A Life" Step one, you say, "We need to talk." He walks, you say, "Sit down. It's just a talk." He smiles politely back at you You stare politely right on through Some sort of window to your right As he goes left and you stay right Between the lines of fear and blame You begin to wonder why you came [Chorus] Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend Somewhere along in the bitterness And I would have stayed up with you all night Had I known how to save a life [Chorus] Let him know that you know best 'Cause after all you do know best Try to slip past his defense Without granting innocence Lay down a list of what is wrong The things you've told him all along Pray to God, he hears you And I pray to God, he hears you As he begins to raise his voice You lower yours and grant him one last choice Drive until you lose the road Or break with the ones you've followed He will do one of two things He will admit to everything Or he'll say he's just not the same And you'll begin to wonder why you came

I know as soon as we hit the sweet spot, an intangible instant when the music gains control of fluttering wings to take real flight - soaring, swooping, diving and rising in the small studio. No single one of us is in control. The wall of sound is its own thing - lifted, weight shared, by five pairs of hands. I shake hair from closed eyes just because I need to move. If I let the pressure build and build and keep it in my hands, in the guitar, I'll explode. We carve out places for the verses, the chorus repetitions, and the coda. We line the edges of sonic space with rhythm and melody and stand Scope's sharp samples at each corner.

Cairo: the future city, the new metropole of plants cascading from solar-paneled roofs to tree-lined avenues with white washed facades abut careful restorations and integrated innovations all shining together in a chorus of new and old. Civil initiatives will soon find easy housing in the abandoned architectural prizes of Downtown, the river will be flooded with public transportation, the shaded spaces underneath bridges and flyovers will flower into common land connected by tramways to dignified schools and clean hospitals and eclectic bookshops and public parks humming with music in the evenings. The revolution has begun and people, every day, are supplanting the regime with their energy and initiative in this cement super colony that for decades of state failure has held itself together with a collective supraintelligence keeping it from collapse. Something here, in Cairo's combination of permanence and piety and proximity, bound people together.

Not long after I learned about Frozen, I went to see a friend of mine who works in the music industry. We sat in his living room on the Upper East Side, facing each other in easy chairs, as he worked his way through a mountain of CDs. He played “Angel,” by the reggae singer Shaggy, and then “The Joker,” by the Steve Miller Band, and told me to listen very carefully to the similarity in bass lines. He played Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and then Muddy Waters’s “You Need Love,” to show the extent to which Led Zeppelin had mined the blues for inspiration. He played “Twice My Age,” by Shabba Ranks and Krystal, and then the saccharine ’70s pop standard “Seasons in the Sun,” until I could hear the echoes of the second song in the first. He played “Last Christmas,” by Wham! followed by Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” to explain why Manilow might have been startled when he first heard that song, and then “Joanna,” by Kool and the Gang, because, in a different way, “Last Christmas” was an homage to Kool and the Gang as well. “That sound you hear in Nirvana,” my friend said at one point, “that soft and then loud kind of exploding thing, a lot of that was inspired by the Pixies. Yet Kurt Cobain” — Nirvana’s lead singer and songwriter — “was such a genius that he managed to make it his own. And ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?” — here he was referring to perhaps the best-known Nirvana song. “That’s Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling.’ ” He began to hum the riff of the Boston hit, and said, “The first time I heard ‘Teen Spirit,’ I said, ‘That guitar lick is from “More Than a Feeling.” ’ But it was different — it was urgent and brilliant and new.” He played another CD. It was Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” a huge hit from the 1970s. The chorus has a distinctive, catchy hook — the kind of tune that millions of Americans probably hummed in the shower the year it came out. Then he put on “Taj Mahal,” by the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor, which was recorded several years before the Rod Stewart song. In his twenties, my friend was a DJ at various downtown clubs, and at some point he’d become interested in world music. “I caught it back then,” he said. A small, sly smile spread across his face. The opening bars of “Taj Mahal” were very South American, a world away from what we had just listened to. And then I heard it. It was so obvious and unambiguous that I laughed out loud; virtually note for note, it was the hook from “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” It was possible that Rod Stewart had independently come up with that riff, because resemblance is not proof of influence. It was also possible that he’d been in Brazil, listened to some local music, and liked what he heard.

Rent creates new possibilities for characters’ sexualities in musicals by representing multiple gay and lesbian characters with frank and casual openness. Rent is peopled with a gay male couple (Angel and Collins) and a lesbian couple (Maureen and Joanne) and it takes those sexualities for granted in the musical’s world of NYC’s East Village circa 1990. Rent’s structure—a single protagonist, Mark, surrounded by a close-knit community—borrows formal conventions of ensemble musicals of the late 1960s and 1970s, including Hair, Company, Godspell, and A Chorus Line. This structure enables the musical to nod to nonheterosexual identities and relationships, an ideological gesture that speaks to its (successful) intention to address musical theater’s wide range of spectators and even make them feel politically progressive. This device of including a few gay characters in a community-based story is repeated with the gay male couples in Avenue Q and Spring Awakening, and perhaps foretells a musical theater future with a more consistent nod to gay people (or gay men, at least).

Rent creates new possibilities for characters’ sexualities in musicals by representing multiple gay and lesbian characters with frank and casual openness. Rent is peopled with a gay male couple (Angel and Collins) and a lesbian couple (Maureen and Joanne) and it takes those sexualities for granted in the musical’s world of NYC’s East Village circa 1990. Rent’s structure—a single protagonist, Mark, surrounded by a close-knit community—borrows formal conventions of ensemble musicals of the late 1960s and 1970s, including Hair, Company, Godspell, and A Chorus Line. This structure enables the musical to nod to nonheterosexual identities and relationships, an ideological gesture that speaks to its (successful) intention to address musical theater’s wide range of spectators and even make them feel politically progressive. This device of including a few gay characters in a community-based story is repeated with the gay male couples in Avenue Q and Spring Awakening, and perhaps foretells a musical theater future with a more consistent nod to gay people (or gay men, at least).14 Still, both Rent and Spring Awakening ultimately use gay characters to bolster heteronormativity. Angel serves as the emotional touchstone of Rent, endlessly generous and hopeful, caring and sensitive. All mourn his death, which compels the other characters to look at their lives and choices. That Angel’s death enables the other characters to learn about themselves replicates a typical (tired) trope in which an Other (usually a person of color or a person with a disability) aids in the self-actualization of the principal character. Also, Collins and Angel have the most loving and healthy relationship, which the musical needs to eliminate so as not to valorize the gay male couple above all else. In addition, Joanne and Maureen sing a lively number, “Take Me or Leave Me,” but the musical doesn’t take their relationship seriously. Maureen is presented as a fickle, emotionally abusive, yet irresistible lover (Joanne and Mark’s duet, “The Tango Maureen”) and a less-than-accomplished artist (her “The Cow Jumped over the Moon” is a parody of performance art).15 In contrast, Mimi

I’m sort of nervous you’ll find out Even though I want you to I’m sort of nervous you’ll be angry Even though I know that’s not you We’ve been through this all before And you never made me feel unsure But still A hush had fallen over the crowd as soon as she began to sing and Julie marveled at how different this atmosphere was from the raucous one the boys had described to her from their visit to the club. She wondered if Caleb would be satisfied with her slow and emotional song choice but if he was dissatisfied with her he didn’t show it on his face. He merely glanced around at the rapt expressions of the lifers and smirked. Julie allowed her eyes to slide over to her friends who were both watching her with knowing looks. She knew that the sadness in her lyrics was reflected in their eyes, that they felt sorry for her and that they ached for Luke too. She forced her gaze away from them, needing to focus on getting through the song and finding it almost impossible in the face of their pity. I’m sort of hopeful you’ll find out Even though that’s not fair I’m sort of hopeful you'll guess Even though I’m so scared I don’t know what the right choice is And part of me wants you to insist But still Despite all of the circumstances that made singing this particular song in this particular venue absolutely loaded down with baggage she found herself slipping into the zone she always occupied when performing. She could feel the heady rush of doing what she was meant to do in front of people hanging on her every word. She wished Luke was there to sing with her but she had also never been so glad that he wasn’t. She gripped the mic stand and raised her voice to new heights as she began the chorus. How do I tell you this isn’t where I belong? How do I tell you this was a tragedy all along? That we never had a chance At a happy ending at all Just a few brief stolen moments Between your heart and mine How do I tell you? How do I tell you? Goodbye She could hear emotion breaking through into her voice but she didn’t care. The ghost band once again seemed to sense what she had heard in her head and the music built and built before suddenly dropping to next to nothing. A few chords on the piano were all that accompanied the final verse as she gave it her all. I’m sort of happy we happened Even though I know the memories Will hurt I’m sort of happy we met here Even if it took a curse I know that I’ve made mistakes And some of them are hard to shake But still Julie allowed herself to truly see the audience for the first time. They were still watching her with awed expressions but something about the lighting in the club seemed different. There was a soft golden glow settling over the whole room. Julie blinked and the glow was gone. She barely had time to wonder if she had imagined it before the band came back in full force for the final chorus. How do I tell you this isn’t where I belong? How do I tell you this was a tragedy all along? That we never had a chance At a happy ending at all Just a few brief stolen moments Between your heart and mine How do I tell you? How do I tell you? Goodbye The band fell away again and Julie’s voice echoed through the ballroom alone on the final lines. How do I tell you? Goodbye

Now a negro was dancing, and the faster he danced, the wilder grew the hidden music. Suddenly as it grew louder still, his limbs began to expand and he could touch the eight corners of the vast room with head, finger or toe. His white draperies, too, flowed out, unrolling from some compact centre within themselves. As he spun and somersaulted, his bones ceased to stiffen, his skin to bind, his muscles came untied; gravity was abated, space negated, volume grew fluid. But time danced on, to the tempo of the music without source; and when this music stopped, the negro shrank again to his usual size. In an underground cave, shining warmly from some hidden illumination, a line of swathed dancers began to move, springing up and down on the same spot with magnetic gesticulations. Their leader passed along the lines with an iron whip, lashing them like spinning-tops to make them dance more fiercely. Up and down the line he strode, more and more swiftly; and all at once, as his strokes grew more potent, the dancers began to glow. Then, as he reached each one in turn, they successively burst into flame. Leaping ever higher, these human torches filled the low-roofed cavern with their ardent rite; and finally left the floor, to circle, a chorus of serene fire-balloons, near the ceiling.