What is your least favourite feeling?
Normally, one would go about avoiding sadness in their daily lives like a natural reflex. But with an empty music staff titled Nothing at two in the morning, we found ourselves actively searching for those deep dark corners. It was a troublesome musical number to say the least.
“Take me home
Take me to the place I used to know”
When our mind took us on a journey towards buried memories and imaginations, we could only hope to remember our way back. Composing was meant to be challenging but we have never thought it would be scary. It was from the comfort of our own homes where we questioned how we even jotted these cruel words down. Something must have happened; something almost too similar to the corners of Sol Town; something we only dare to let others rehearse.
“Where have you been?
You said you'd never leave me here alone”
Hearing it being sung out loud for the first time was uncomfortable. Perhaps this feeling was just an accumulation of unmastered vocals on a patchy Musescore backing track, but we definitely were not expecting tears from the cast. It was probably the cruelest request to ask someone to relive the time they had lost something and be reminded that it is never going to come back. But that was our cast on stage, performing the worst yet the best keys we had found to wrap up the first act.
“Without a word you leave
With no goodbyes
I'm here
Alone”
Nothing was so personal to January Sun, yet open enough for half of the town to sing along with her words. We have been told that music has its way with feelings. It deepens and amplifies through each and every pitch of emotion. If anything, we hope that the audience felt Sol Town as much as they questioned Sol Town.
We are not strangers to sadness and loss and loneliness and all other hidden negative spaces of feelings embedded in this musical number. It is absurdly paradoxical, the way we hide from negative feelings yet so often reach for the most melancholy songs. For all we know, there might be a certain comfort in this cathartic energy of a sad tune; somewhere we safely experience corners of our thoughts; something we should profoundly treasure.