"Sin" Scene 18

“Santana’s Blues.”   Santana’s plans have played out…she got what she wanted: she showed “Luis” up and got his attention with her scheme.  All the same, it ended in a truce, as it apparently always does.  Finally, Santana admits to herself that the core of h er motivation is that she's in love with someone who doesn’t love her back and, worse yet, completely aware of the fact that what she's going through isn't rational or rewarding—but she believes she's powerless to stop her feelings, being a person of passion.  Resigned to her fate, she confesses—sometimes it’s hard to be who she is, but she’d rather be miserable and know herself than settle for a compromise. 

In some ways, I think this song may have been the entire reason I created “Sin” in the first place.  Around the time I was in rehearsals for my first show “Ecstasy” the Ahmanson theatre brought the famous Wagner ring cycle of operas to LA for the first time.  Initially I was really excited, having heard about this epic piece all my life.  I was sure it would be a life-changing experience and in many ways it was.  I did a lot of research so I’d be prepared to enjoy the thing properly.  I was specifically interested in the idea that Wagner’s whole epic was created to support the last couple hours of Götterdämmerung, the fourth and final opera in the cycle—so a dozen or more hours and three full operas of backstory were created just to get to that one moment.  The mind reels. 

That being said, the Los Angeles premiere interpretations of the operas were dreadful and I stopped after Die Walküre (which was, to be fair, pretty dynamic even with the horrible avant garde staging), I was also growing increasingly uneasy finding out things I was reading about Wagner’s personal beliefs, many of which were blatantly obvious in this cycle of operas and distasteful to me at a genetic level.   Well, suffice to say, I felt happy enough to take the idea of a show being built around a single moment/idea and building backwards from there, making something good out of something I found unfortunate. 

For Santana’s “11th hour” number (which literally tips a hat to that concept in the line, ‘I’m on my 11th cigarette') I wanted to come up with something really different, for me anyway.  I knew it had to be powerful, but also sad, but also strong, but also heartfelt.  Obviously one of my influences was Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” to perhaps embarrassing effect (me trying to take influence from that song is the equal of a small child using a box of crayons to copy the Sistine Chapel I suppose) but it was the only framework I could come up with for the song.  The melody was simple enough, it wrote itself and where parts were missing I filled in with bits and pieces of things I’d come up with for other songs throughout the years. 

One thing that came up was that whenever a singer would encounter “Santana’s Blues” for the first time they would be tempted to vocally “blast”  about ¾ of the way through, really give it their all for that specific moment.  The song DOES call for a big blast in the final notes but the interesting thing we found was, if you try to push the earlier parts where it’s still building and go for the blast too soon you lose the emphasis of the end…I know this because we tried it in rehearsals for the 2011 version.  Terri Olsen, who is a consummate professional and certainly knows what she’s doing (and has many more years of experience performing than I do composing) kept pushing back, like, “This needs a big ‘blast’ of power here,” and Kay initially agreed, until I explained how I meant for the song to work.  It’s one of those cases where maybe I was right and maybe I was wrong, but I believed 100% (and still do) that’s the way the song should work and every time it was performed live I saw how powerful those last moments were, because of how the energy is held back earlier.  Just a curiosity—maybe someday someone will reinterpret the song and prove me wrong, but it's a rare instance where I stuck to my guns in terms of how a song should be interpreted. 

The song, in any case, sums up the whole show really.  Looking back, I suppose, “Sin” was born out of my frustrated love life.  If “Ecstasy,” originally written by me as a naïve 19 year old many years before we did it live, was based in a fear of sexual awakening, “Sin” was a reflection of my exhaustion at not being able to find the love I craved at that time of my life.  Rather than “love” what I had for most of my life was a confusing, very long list of obsessive crushes that I had on people, or the idea of people anyway, rather than the reality of mature, give and take relationships.  How this worked and how I got out of it is a long and very personal story that I may or may not share someday…suffice to say writing “Sin” was catharsis and one more step towards the possibility of a healthy, intimate relationship with another person.  Certainly, by the time of the 2015 Fringe Fest version I had worked it all out; I had, in fact, married my husband Renato in December of 2014, right after gay marriage laws were passed in California, and as of this writing we’ve been together happily for over 10 years now. 

The crux of the song is that Santana knows full well her fixation on “Luis” isn’t healthy or even something she truly wants…she’s obsessed with Luis at a chemical level, and knows it, and it leads to nothing but trouble and bad feelings,  but she can’t seem to get herself out of it, and that’s why she says, “When your heart is set on someone, what else can you do?” 

I think unrequited love longing is a pretty universal emotion, but I also think it hits some people harder than other (sensitive artists).  I have come to accept that some people likely have a genetic predisposition towards addiction. I also think some people are just not as equipped to deal with, or even understand, the powerful pull of craving that comes with obsession.  I didn’t learn about “limerence” until just a few years ago actually (if the subject of obsessive attraction—to people OR things—interests you, you can look it up, it’s a fascinating topic).  I certainly knew, with most of the obsessive crushes I had in my formative years, that it wasn’t something that was serving me, but—like an addict (and coming from parents who were addicts it came as no surprise to me to find out later addictive parents can create limerent children) I couldn’t seem to stop even when it was painful and interrupting my life.   It’s a horrible, lonely, confusing feeling and a strange way to live.  One way to deal with it, work it out, is to write about it...and so I did, and still do really; most of my creative works at least touch on obsessive thoughts and feelings.

Well, again, even by the time I wrote “Santana’s Blues” I was able to be more objective and write about obsessive love more clinically than passionately, with knowledge and compassion rather than from the stand point of someone suffering from it.  But it makes it perhaps one of the most honest things I wrote for the show, or wrote, period, maybe.  And it took some courage to put it in a show and have people sing it in front of an audience night after night, considering.

Tricia Ridgway was the first person to sing the song, on the demo…she was pretty tired by the time we got to the last of her songs for the album—which we recorded all of in one session--in a hot living room in Palm Springs--and I always thought that lent itself well to the world-weary emotions of the moment.  At any rate, Tricia’s version is very powerful, quite sincere and I thought she did a great job with it.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFil1fXHhRY

I remember the first time Terri Olsen sang the song in rehearsals for the 2011 performance.  She took issue with the concept of the line, “It’s hell being a woman,” and I didn’t really think about it until she brought it up (and I’m glad she did).  “Sin” was written in 2010 but it seems like a lifetime ago now, things were so completely different in terms of cultural attitudes then.  It wasn’t nearly as big an issue to “appropriate” someone’s experience then; I mean, writing a song about a woman’s experience as a man who identifies as gay and male didn’t seem as offensive then as it might now.  Certainly, I had no agenda behind creating a song about a woman’s experience for a woman to sing, lamenting her feelings for a man.  If anything, I was trying  hard to do the subject justice; I have known some very powerful, amazing women in my time (including my dear, departed grandmother, mother and sister, as well as a host of incredible women friends too numerous—and personal—to mention) and would like to believe I learned a lot from them. If nothing else, I listened carefully to, and thought seriously about, what they told me concerning their life experiences, and I tried to reflect that much in my song. 

Eventually I told Terri that I didn’t literally mean to say or imply that being a woman was by its very nature a hell, but that it was sometimes tough to be a closeted gay man, or even a white male for that matter, with all the expectations that went with that in my upbringing, and it was indeed often hellish; I couldn’t even begin to imagine what being a woman was really like (but, again, had heard many stories over the years).  And I thought the line about  “I’d rather be ‘in hell’ and be myself than be beholden to any guy" justified the line, hopefully.  I think Terri understood what I was going for, and certainly sold the hell out of the song. 

I really like Terri’s rendition.  While I did conceive of it as a blues song it was a white man’s limited-knowledge version of the blues and so it made sense that Terri delivered a very clean and precise—but very strong and gutsy—reading of the song.  Her technical prowess and control gave the song a sense of command, and Terri in general was just a very strong person—in talent and in personality (I speak of her past tense because we lost touch years ago when she moved away from LA to pursue things outside the entertainment industry).  Her version of “Santana’s Blues” capped off an evening that was at once sophisticated and at the same time loose and playful somehow.  I was on cloud nine every time she sang the song in rehearsals anyway, and her performance the night of the show was perfect.  Here it is, once again, at “Skinny’s” bar in October of 2011.  https://youtu.be/PaUm_aOoE0A

Then there’s Saudia.  What can I say?  If this song is any good it’s because of her, there’s no question, full-stop.  I can’t imagine anyone doing the song any better vocally, and that may be the reason I’ve never put together another version of the show; I basically said to Saudia at some point in rehearsals, “This part belongs to you and is yours for however long you want it.” 

Saudia answered when I reached out to a small, specific group of performers I found on a casting website a month or two before the Fringe Festival.  At some point it struck me that the one thing my show really lacked, really needed and would benefit from the most was some soul.  I knew it was something I couldn’t actually give to it myself—and didn’t know if I had the right to ask--but I had, I thought, at least set up the foundation for it and could nurture it along if given a chance.  When Saudia showed up for her audition she took me by the hand and sang “At Last” to me, staring at me the whole time—I’ve never fought "happy tears" back harder in my life (although, looking back, it would have been just fine if I’d cried, knowing Saudia). 

My only real direction to Saudia, other than when she had questions about the character of Santana, or wanted to discuss specific lyrics or moments in the show, was to make the part—and the songs—her own…to do them her way.  It was not something I’d seen done before—any show I’d ever been involved in up to that point (and quite a few as it turns out) was done with precision and specificity, with directors and choreographers unquestioned—that is one of the most important things Kay demanded on my show “Ecstasy” certainly, and even to some degree the staged reading of “Sin” (and it’s why they worked, ultimately).    I knew we had to toss all that away for this version of “Sin” and embrace the raw “realness” of it if we could find it…and that’s another reason I knew I had to direct the 2015 version of the show myself and not have Kay do it (assuming she’d even grace me with her talent, even though she said she would of course).  I needed to see where “Sin” wanted to go, with the help of a multi-talented singer-actor-writer-etc like Saudia…it needed to be a collaborative effort. 

My instincts paid off, I think.  Well, watch the clip of Saudia performing any of the songs in the show, but specifically this one, and you tell me.  You can’t “write” something like this, or even direct it probably—it either exists or it doesn’t.  Saudia owned the character of “Santana,” she owned the show really, and the songs and lyrics and the audience.  She could have written the song herself in her own way if she’d chosen to do so—and she did improve it.  It was one of the most important moments I have felt in my life as a person who creates things: when I gave this moment I thought I’d created over to Saudia, who was good enough to take it from me and then give it back to me as something incredible of hers that I was lucky enough to receive.  It probably sounds really out there but I don’t know how else to describe it.  Night after night I watched Saudia sing "my" song and was intrinsically aware that it was not my song at all in the final analysis, and that it was better for that. 

Well, in the end, it was a fantastic “penultimate” number, an 11th hour moment that perfectly summed up—in my opinion anyway—a show that had been, after all, something like a cabaret, a night of entertainment in a boozy dive bar in Hollywood, a reflection on the nature of belief, faith, conviction, relationships, vices and weakness, loyalty and deception, loss and love.  And like any good 11th number, because of Saudia, there was both an air of world-weariness and completion, and so the song effectively put a wrap on the narrative of the show, leaving only one song left to conclude things. 

“Santana’s Blues” was the culmination of everything I was working for up until then, and perhaps everything I was when I wrote “Sin,” and so it might be my proudest moment; the peak of what I could do as a musical artist—maybe ever, time will tell.  And I have Saudia to thank for it, and to have shared it with her was an honor.  Here she is…at last.  https://youtu.be/SNOlNclxTQw