“Sometimes life is just the things you don't now and the things you thought you knew.”
You are at the beginning, Act 1 Scene 3. Listen to FRONT PAGE, and imagine setting foot into the midst of a wondrous figment of society; where its people thrive on making the most out of their day, and where it feels like it’s both close yet so far from where you belong. To romanticize your point of view further, let’s imagine you are Colin Clark, the protagonist of your story, a journalist for the Sol Town’s most renowned magazine, in search of lively stimulus. Within and limited by your powers, all you can do for these people is paint a world through your words.
“Someday I will paint the world for you,
Show them a brand new view”
Here, your power to portray the idea of an inferior social class of beings was seemingly limitless to a single life, the life of Miss January Sun. The Sun's only daughter takes on her family’s working class pub, which is unnoticed by the upper crust. You decide that this lady will be on the cover of the town’s news; you decide to display the life of a different social class conveyed beneath the notion of January. Unknowingly, so much metaphor can be painted to artistically represent something so multifaceted as “the world”, or as January, or as “her love”.
Through your writings, you sing—
“Maybe the town will see the truth
The way I see you too”
Through your eyes, January Sun is a worthwhile sight. Through your depiction, Sol will behold January, along with her people, her hard work, and her stern tenderness, as a whole. Yet, that “maybe” hints at uncertainty in “the way I see you” — how much truth of a human being could be on display just after a chat anyway?
The wizardry of writing newspapers and temporarily being the architecture of peoples of the town’s worldviews, is that whatever reported should not be grounded in innate assumptions. Filtering an entire class through your single lens will result in a morphed perception of reality. People’s mental representation of other beings is not whole, but fragmented; even more so if a fragmented representation is being imposed on others through the publication medium.
Act 2 Scene 3 with SHOW AND TELL follows your uncomfortable but vital period of character development, as the writer haltingly alters his perspective on the world wrapped in Sol Town. Within this scene, the imperfect reality of the working class is unearthed, along with yours: people exist outside your imagination and operate in their own private torment of consciousness.
“Listen to my words
Find out what we're worth
Find another you
Patiently and slowly you'll see”
The conversation between Jack and Colin is one of the crucial turning points of the musical. This is the moment of disclosure when Colin comes to terms with the remnant of the people, and the remainder of himself. The song was written as the world opens up to you if you choose to look at it through the perspectives of the people you communicate to, not through your personal egocentric lens. As sung by the people from a deviant social group, to find out their worth is not about locating them in the social hierarchy, or placing their image in the front page of a newspaper. It is figuring out whether the stories of people with less fortune are worth receiving wholeheartedly in their truest form.
Only then will your knowledge be held remarkably as it will be holding two realities that are mutually exclusive at the same time. Conceptually, you can experience one reality today, but imagine a brand new one tomorrow. The only way to begin the process, is to—
“Open up your mind
Look inside for more is left to find”