“Do I seem different?” — If you have to ask the question out loud, the answer is most likely yes. But then it takes another look in the mirror, sometimes a whole musical number, to understand exactly how. So we did just that.
The usual: January cleaning up after a long day, whilst Jack strums his guitar. You see, the character Jack Daniels was never meant to just be that bartender family friend. He was the physical representation of what January had left of her parents: Sunday pub itself. And a pub is different from an amusement park or its cousin, the nightclub. You don’t find it for colours, noise or temporary answers; it just asks you more questions:“Remember your first performance?”
As Jack begins to sing, January’s mind further wanders of a time that existed before now. A young Sebastian and Emma Sun enter, cover her eyes, and a giggle or two later, they are on Sunday Pub’s stage. It is opening night: there’s the first pour of whiskey, the band, and that same wide eyed look. Little Miss Sun then turns 17. There is an alley, a man in a dark grey suit, two gunshots, and within seconds, her whole world passes away. With another guitar strum, it is now. Walking down from Sunday’s stage, January finds the first drink she learnt a recipe for by the bar. Behind its wooden stools is where she’d hide to be seeked, peeking through the muddy boots of new and returning folks. And the Sebastian and Emma she remembers are by the mic again. All is frozen, along with the days when their music in this glass windowed box was her whole world.
It is difficult to tell whether I cry without fail each time we run this scene, because of the song or because I know the story it is based on. What I knew for sure was that I wanted to stage a flashback — a FRAGMENTS fundamental, and well, one made sense after Jack’s loaded question, even for someone as emotionally dazed as Jan.
The real January gave me an 8-page letter about what had happened. At the time, just under a year after the fact, I’m not sure even she had begun to process the events. Now I may only have the copyrights to recreate the details in the form of the scene above, but what remains true is January’s love for music and the love in the Sun family. This isn’t to say that her letter, or this whole musical it inspired, uncovered any concrete answers about what lies ahead. Perhaps in this retracing of her retracing, we all got one step closer. And with that:
“I fell in love at the first sight
Day by day, key by key, all of my heart
Yet in a moment life knocked on my door
We grow up wanting more
Let my heart go but this time”
The song FIRST was composed to be a long overdue jam sesh between two old friends. But as with most overdue visits, its scene was one of revelation; for the audience; for January herself. FIRST began before Jan even knew she needed its music, just as a story can end before we have a chance to know we’d miss it. At first, it’s a fragment of time, and one good replay can help you find “where have you been?”