The End of an Era

Today marks the end of an era with the closing of the award-winning Broadway musical Rent at Broadway's Nederlander Theatre.

Today Mark, Roger, Mimi, Angel, Collins, Maureen, Joanne and Benny took the stage one last time for the final performance of Rent after a successful 12-year run on Broadway.

Those of you who know me really well know that my roots are in theater arts and my all-time favorite musical is Rent, not just because I love musical theater, but also because it represents a time, a generation, a cause, and it parallels aspects of my own life and past.

I write this post today in celebration of Rent. However, it's also a very personal post for a time passed and loved ones lost. And it's about celebrating life everyday because as the song goes "There's No Day But Today."

The first time I saw Rent, I felt like I was watching my own life up on that stage. I was mesmerized. I was in awe. I was in love. It took my breath away, but at the same time my heart sank because Rent's creator, the late and brilliant Jonathan Larson, would have been someone I personally would have been honored to have been friends with, or at minimum, had the chance to meet.

Larson tragically died from an aortic aneurysm after being misdiagnosed (twice) in a New City emergency room. He died the night before Rent's first preview at the New York Theater Workshop and ten days before his 36th birthday. Writer and Rolling Stone Editor David Lipsky described the night Larson died, right after the final dress rehearsal on January 25, 1996:

He (Jonathan) was interviewed by a reporter from the New York Times, who told him off the record that he thought the play a marvelous achievement. Then he went home, put on some water for tea, and died. His roommate found him on the floor of the kitchen, beside his coat. Jon was 35 years old.

It's such a tragic and sad story. After all those years of school, writing and re-writing musicals, and the blood, sweat and tears working on Rent, Larson never got to reap the rewards of his hard work and enjoy Rent’s smashing success. His death was surreal and is still a reminder to us all that there truly is No Day But Today.

Larson brilliantly captured an era and was able to convey a truth that many of us from that time were living. 1996, the year Larson died and Rent debuted, was one of the worst years of my life. That year I went to more funerals than someone of my age should have to experience in a lifetime. I went to ten funerals that year and 2 more at the beginning of 1997. One of those funerals was my own father's who I tragically lost to suicide.

Three weeks following my dad's death, and the first day that I began to feel like I was going to survive the nightmare of his sudden death, I came home to a phone call from one of my best friends, Beth Cortopassi, who informed me that her brother-in-law, and my dear friend, Peter Cortopassi had died that day. Losing him crushed me all over again, and even worse, not being by his side when he died was more than I could bear.

I met Peter through Beth. She had kept telling me that I had to meet her brother-in-law because she thought the two of us would hit it off, and we did. It was a great friendship. We never judged each other and always supported each other, even when we didn't agree with each other or when we didn't like who the other was dating. Our friendship lasted through the good, the bad and the ugly. And it got ugly sometimes, but overall, it's was a friendship that I will always cherish. What I miss most is being able to call him when I'm having a rotten day. He always put me in a happier place. I sure miss that.

Peter was one of the most creative and engaging individuals that I ever met. We had some good times together. He sure made me laugh a lot. In fact, a few days after his services Beth and I were sitting in his apartment in San Francisco still in shock that he truly was gone, even though we had months to prepare ourselves. That final goodbye was never easy to accept.

I sat there that day in his apartment trying to still feel him, wrapping myself in his clothes, smelling his pillow as his scent was still very much on it, and taking in every piece of art that his hands had created when the phone rang. It was a friend of his, who didn’t know that Peter had died, and he was having a bad day and was calling Peter because he said that Peter always made him laugh and cheered him up. I knew exactly what he meant. Peter had that gift. He was beautiful and full of life.

Peter certainly knew how to live life to the fullest (and then some), which is why it was so difficult when his body began to breakdown. After almost a decade of living with HIV, his body could no longer fight the virus and he died on a warm Sunday afternoon in March of 1996.

That year, I went to too many funerals of friends and family and all of them were too young to die with so much life left in them to live. By December of 1996, after the funeral of another friend who also died of AIDS, the ground beneath me was so unstable that I was afraid to pick up the phone every time it rang for fear it would be another death. But as the song Without You from Rent says "the ground thaws, the rain falls, the grass grows...the seeds root, the flowers bloom, the children play, the stars gleam, the poets dream, the eagles fly, without you, the earth turns, the sun burns, but I die..."

Yes, you die inside, but in time, you live again. If I've learned anything in this life, it's that life is for the living and no matter how much pain and loss you have experienced, you have to pick yourself up and move on and live everyday as if it was your last.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to be at today’s final performance of Rent because I’m 3,000 miles away from Broadway stuck on the West Coast preparing for a crazy work week with two conferences, TechCrunch50 in San Francisco and DEMOfall in San Diego.

It was at last year's DEMOfall conference that in the middle of the conference I received a text message that sank my heart all over again as it has with every death. Whether the tragic news comes in person, by phone or text message, it hurts all the same.

As I write this today in celebration of life, Rent and in remembrance of its creator Jonathan Larson, I also want to take a moment to remember Hugh Hammersley and John Greco who died a year ago this month in a tragic car accident on their way to work early Wednesday morning on September 26, 2007. John was only 20 years old and Hugh had celebrated his 21st birthday the night before the accident. It was their deaths that I learned about via that heart-sinking text message at DEMO last year.

I know Hugh's family and met John's mother once several years ago, and had the opportunity to spend more time with both families last year during the services and the days following. As we approach the one year anniversary of their passing, I will be remembering them and keeping them in my thoughts and prayers.

I've seen Rent so many times that I've lost count, and sadly, while I wasn’t able to be there today to experience the final Broadway performance, I certainly was there in spirit, just as my dad, Peter and the others who I love and have lost are still with me as I dance my way through this life.

La Vie Bohème!

Watch Seasons of Love from the movie Rent

Comments

[wylie]

This was powerful, moving and well-written, much like "Rent" itself. Great post, Miiko.