SONG OF THE DAY

“The Ori­gin Of Love” as per­formed by John Cameron Mitchell and Miriam Shor (Hed­wig & The Angry Inch Motion Pic­ture Sound­track, Hybrid Record­ings, 2001). Writ­ten by Stephen Trask.

INTERESTING FACTS (from wikipedia)

- Stephen Trask wrote the song, which is based on a story from Plato’s Sym­po­sium. In the Sym­po­sium, a party is being held in which a series of speeches are given pay­ing homage to Eros, the Greek god of love. “The Ori­gin of Love” is taken from the speech given by the play­wright Aristo­phanes. Accord­ing to the speech, long ago, humans were com­posed of two peo­ple stuck back-to-back, with two faces and eight limbs. Male-male humans came from the Sun, female-female humans from the Earth and male-female humans from the Moon. The gods, out of jeal­ousy, split them in half. Now, through­out our lives, we are always try­ing to find our “other half”, and sex­ual inter­course is the only means we have to put the two halves back together; this desire to be one per­son again is what we call “love”. How­ever, it is impos­si­ble to fully rejoin two peo­ple because it is our souls and not our bod­ies that most desire to be reunited.

- Trask says of the song’s form: “When I started writ­ing that song, the only way I could think to write it was as a pic­ture book. So I wrote it, all the images in it, and the way the story gets told, as the lan­guage of, like, a Dr. Seuss pic­ture book. If you read the lyrics out loud, they read like a pic­ture book.”

- While taken from the story within the story in the Sym­po­sium, the song delib­er­ately jum­bles char­ac­ters from dif­fer­ent cul­tures (such as Zeus, Osiris, and Thor.) It puts for­ward Hedwig’s idea that humans have pre-destined soul mates, and that she is seek­ing hers, Tommy Gno­sis. At the end of the film Tommy addresses this idea in the reprise of the song “Wicked Lit­tle Town”, argu­ing that no cos­mic force con­trols our des­tiny (“And there’s no mys­ti­cal design, no cos­mic lover pre­as­signed.”) and sug­gest­ing that she needs to move on.

- Accord­ing to the Inter­net Movie Data­base, the vocals for this song as it appears in the film were recorded live.

- The ani­ma­tion that accom­pa­nies the song in the film ver­sion was drawn by Emily Hub­ley.

- On the album Wig in a Box (a char­ity cover of the Hed­wig sound­track), “The Ori­gin of Love” is cov­ered sep­a­rately by Rufus Wain­wright and Jonathan Richman.

MY TAKE

Wel­come the the 1990’s Musi­cals blog entry, a very spe­cial part of 1990’s week! This entry is, of course, ded­i­cated mostly to the genius of the rock musi­cal Hed­wig and The Angry Inch, but I do want to pay brief trib­ute for the other genius musi­cals of the stage that this decade gave us. Here’s my Top 10 Musi­cals of the 1990’s:

(1) Hed­wig and The Angry Inch (1998) —– tied —– (1) RENT (1996)

(3) Aida (1998)

(4) The Lion King (1997)

(5) Chil­dren of Eden (1998)

(6) A New Brain (1998)

(7) Jekyll and Hyde (1995)

(8) Once On This Island (1990)

(9) I Love You, You’re Per­fect, Now Change (1996)

(10) The Secret Gar­den (1991

But back to Hed­wig.…Oh, my sweet Hed­wig. This song is one of my true “our song” love songs with my future hus­band, Todd. “I’ll Cover You” from Rent is our other “our song”. Yes, those are both songs about rela­tion­ships with mixed up sexes, and no that does not mat­ter. Both songs are about love and its most inti­mate and painful and raw and expres­sive and mean­ing­ful side.

Watch­ing this movie with Todd back in 2004 was a huge thresh­old we crossed together—I found some­one who appre­ci­ated this song and film as much as I did, who wasn’t scared away by it, who was really struck by its mean­ing and beau­ti­ful music video inter­pre­ta­tion in the film ver­sion and was as sen­si­tive to it as I was. I never thought I could find that in a man and would always have to set­tle a lit­tle in the “Hedwig-love” depart­ment, but within a week of that night I knew my eyes were no longer see­ing a boyfriend but were see­ing a life partner.

Does any­one have the album Wig In A Box? I really want a copy of this album! I’d love to hear the alter­nate ver­sions of the soundtrack’s songs recorded by peo­ple like Rufus Wain­wright!! Drop me an email if you do! joaneebalonee-at-gmail-dot-com

VIDEOS OF THE DAY

Click here to see the updated 1990’s Week playlist, which now includes today’s musi­cal selec­tion, “The Ori­gin of Love”.