My ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ Journey
I can only listen to music that speaks to me or reflects my mood somehow.
When I first gave the Dear Evan Hansen cast album a go earlier this year, it didn’t do much to me. The only song that really stood out to me then was “So Big/So Small,” which I’d already been hooked on and found impossible to get through without breaking down at some point.
The song—and Rachel Bay Jones’ convincing, heartfelt performance—made me, a child of a broken home, imagine how my mom might’ve felt and how hard it is to be a single parent. It also hit me pretty hard remembering how confused a child could be, how they could interpret the situation all wrong (“Is there another truck coming to our driveway, a truck that will take mommy away?”), and how many long-lasting consequences there could be. I just felt so moved and grateful that there were people out there who could relate to my experience, who could put that into song, who could perform it in a way that made me believe that they’ve been there too and that they were sharing a very real, vulnerable part of themselves in the process.
Fast forward a few months to when I started feeling a bit more positive in general (thanks largely to peer counseling and to the meaningful human relationships I’d strengthened). That’s when “You Will Be Found” became more relatable and less like a clichéd anthem to me.
The difference, I think, was that by that point I’d no longer found the message of “You will be found”/“You are not alone” that laughable, as if it’s purely wishful thinking. As I write this, I’m reminded of an event I attended in June, in which the speaker mentioned that “the most hopeful sort of hope is a small amount of it.” That little bit of hope can grow, I now know. It’s made me more receptive to further messages of hope, optimism, shared humanity, kindness, compassion, etc. The part of “You Will Be Found” that stood out to me at the time was “Out of the shadows / The morning is breaking / And all is new, all is new.” It’s believing that something good was happening. It’s a sense of hope that I’d rarely felt until then.
And there’s just something about that “To find each other” in the spoken bits that I find moving. I feel the authenticity in it; I feel that the woman believed what she was saying and wasn’t just reading off a script. “Find each other” is also a message I believe in — it’s sure made a tangible difference to me. It’s part of what sparked this hope that I now carry.
The next evolution of Dear Evan Hansen’s appeal to me came recently, through “Requiem” (the solo version—by Mallory Bechtel, who went from high school to Broadway!—is a gem).
Maybe I hadn’t paid that much attention to the lyrics before or maybe my mind had been focused on something else, but one day, what Zoe (the character) sang about just resonated with me, and it’s something I’m still processing. I imagine I’ll feel similarly to her when my estranged father dies. I feel as if I’m grieving and mourning the father I never had. When I sing along to “Requiem,” I feel some sense anger and arguably even more disappointment. I remember taking in silence the praises heaped on my father by relatives who only ever saw him for short periods of time and experienced a few token displays of generosity and had no idea what I’d seen and gone through. They still have no knowledge of that shameful, hurtful past, and they probably never will.
“For Forever” is another song that I’ve connected with recently. You see, one of the problems with listening to the cast album of a musical that I’ve never seen and that’s not sung through is that I don’t get the full context. Listening to “For Forever” on its own, even when full attention is paid to the lyrics, doesn’t do it justice. It wasn’t until I’d read the whole plot and re-listened to this that I understood how bittersweet this was.
[Possible spoilers in this paragraph.] My heart just breaks when I think about how lonely Evan must be to make up this friendship—and in such detail. It’s a rather ordinary day that he’s describing too (“We just talk and take in the view”), which heightens the sense of longing for meaningful companionship that I so empathize with. The “He’s come to get me” bit really gets me too, knowing that in reality nobody helped Evan when he fell and broke his arm (and that it might have been a suicide attempt?).
There are a few other numbers from the musical that I’ve come to appreciate more as well: “Anybody Have a Map?” and “To Break In a Glove” for the difficult realities involved in parenting, and “Only Us” as a nice duet and also for the line “Try to quiet the noises in your head / We can’t compete with all that.”
So thank you, Dear Evan Hansen, for giving me the material to channel some of my emotions. I’m looking forward to seeing the show when it opens in London sometime next year (I think? I hope?).
