The first time I experienced Jonathan Larson was in secret. I grew up in a religious household that encouraged my love for musicals only to a certain extent. Rent wasn’t exactly something my parents wanted me to see when the movie version was released. I was 10. Regardless, my childhood best friend brought over the DVD (back when this was still revolutionary technology) and I sat in awe as Anthony Rapp, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, and the cast danced around the screen.
I didn’t understand exactly what they were singing about. Why is their heat turned off? AIDS is a sickness — but what is it exactly? Is that really what New York City is like? What is with the cow song? But WOW! Each and every moment made me feel something so different than 42nd Street or Beauty and the Beast.
Fast forward 17 years to 2021. I am 27. No longer do I have to sneak around my parent’s rules to watch movies. Ironically, my dad called me to rave about this new release on Netflix. He often finds a movie he really enjoys and phones to insist I have to watch it. Prior candidates have included The Accountant, Miss Sloane, Doctor Zhivago, and Judy — none of which I have watched despite the recommendation. But his rants about tick, tick…BOOM! only added to my desire to watch Lin Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut.
The film is based on a one-man musical Jonathan Larson wrote before writing Rent, which is his most successful and sadly only critical achievement before his untimely death in 1996. The runtime is intercut with Jonathan, played by Andrew Garfield, on stage during a live performance and a reenactment of the events he is describing. The pressing matter at hand: to finish a song which would complete the musical he is about to workshop right before his 30th birthday.
Two different countdowns are at play: one micro and one macro. The micro is the song. He needs a ballad to finish the second act. Tick, tick, tick. The deadline is just around the corner, getting closer and closer because the workshop is already scheduled. Jonathan knows when and where he’ll be when time runs out. The macro is more of a concept, an understanding that life has an expiration date but that specific deadline is unknown. This fear heightens a pressure that remains topped off by societal expectations and financial burdens.
Throughout the film, Jonathan stays hopeful. He believes in his talent, his drive. There is even a moment where he calls himself the future of musical theater. While this might come off to some as arrogant, there is a certain confidence that is necessary to continue to pursue your dream past a certain age — especially an artistic one. Society looks at those past a certain age who refuse to conform yet continue to struggle in order to pursue their passions with judgment. But isn’t it the dream of making it that keeps us going? Imagine: finally hitting the big times, making enough money off your passion and creativity that you no longer have to do jobs you don’t want to do!
This aspect of Jonathan’s longing hit me somewhere deep. And to do it all before 30? I am turning 28 in a few months! That would mean I only have about 30 months to figure this shit-storm called life out! Yet, I have no prospects knocking down my door asking to buy my scripts or hire me to write the next Great American Novel. All I want to do is write and write and write but the circumstances around me don’t allow for my days to be filled with creating narratives.
In the opening number of tick, tick…BOOM! Larson mentions a few examples of achievements by his role models before the age of 30:
And in just over a week… I will be 30 years old. Older than Stephen Sondheim when he had his first Broadway show. Older than Paul McCartney when he wrote his last song with John Lennon. By the time my parents were 30, they already had two kids. They had careers with steady paychecks. A mortgage. In eight days, my youth will be over forever. And what exactly do I have to show for myself?
We can all play this game. By 30 Donna Tartt published The Secret History, Buffy Sainte-Marie was already a huge folk hit, and Barbara Stanwyck had already been a Ziegfeld girl and a leading lady on the screen headed towards even bigger stardom.
But all that aside: 30 ISN’T EVEN OLD! A quick Google search shows that the average age of death is 78.6 years old — so technically speaking, 30 isn’t even middle age. There are a couple of reasons why as a society we expect people to succeed so young.
- We’ve seen it done before (see the six examples listed prior.)
- The constant fear of not being able to make our dreams a reality.
That second reason is scary and motivates the constant struggle between pressing forward, hoping we can succeed or to give up, settle down, and conform. The more financially fortunate are able to embrace flexibility that the working class is not able to — but we all have bills to pay. And what even is success but some asinine, made up societal expectation that is supposed to quantify talent, passion, and happiness in a material way that talent, passion, and happiness cannot correctly be measured?
Believe it or not, I am not in a position in my life where I can afford to be alive just on my writing. I dream of that day and often imagine what that lifestyle will look like: I wake up at around 5:30 am. Before I brush my teeth, I start the coffee pot. Then, I pull out my writing exercise journal and do my 15 minutes stream of consciousness blurbs. Now that the coffee has cooled to the temperature I like, I sip it slowly, brainstorming as I enjoy the simplicity of that first cup of hot bean juice. After a few minutes, I pour myself a bowl of cereal, eat it, and do the dishes. It is finally time for me to retreat to my desk where I continue for the next few hours with minimal breaks to work on my newest screenplay, novel, or whatever project is currently ruminating in my brain onto the page.
Isn’t that a lovely thought? And every time I think about compromising, giving up on what I love to take a steady, good paying yet soul-crushing job that wouldn’t be nearly as fulfilling, I remind myself how badly I want to write. Sure, I wish I didn’t have to worry about the sad reality of torturous capitalism that fuels extraction from creative people so that others can make money off their passion, but I haven’t quite figured out how to cure the world of greed.
I know there will be some improvisation in my plans. Jonathan had to do that, too. He thought that workshopping his musical would mean he would never have to serve another Sunday brunch but he was wrong. It wasn’t that he wasn’t talented, it just wasn’t the correct material or the correct time. If he had given up, tick, tick…BOOM! wouldn’t exist, Rent wouldn’t exist, and now this Oscar-nominated movie in Jonathan’s honor wouldn’t exist either.
Each and every day is a step in the direction to where I want to be, or at least that’s what I tell myself. And there is something even more chilling in Jonathan’s unconscious knowing that his time was short. He died 10 days before his 36th birthday, meaning he never got to see the way he changed Broadway and musical theater as a whole.
Maybe that’s the ultimate message behind tick, tick…BOOM! — to hold onto enough hope to believe our big picture dreams can still happen while living for the current moment. My worth isn’t determined by my age, my dreams aren’t diminished just because of some upcoming milestone, and I still believe that I will succeed as a writer someday in the near future. Cages or wings, which do you prefer?
