Nine people's favorite thing

It was another daisy-chain of the universe giving me what I need: I was listening to the latest Blank Check episode, on the Disney Hercules, with guest Larry Owens. Larry Owens, aside from being a comedian and all-around brilliance, is a musical theater actor. He's a musical theater person. And in a throw-away aside, explaining how the movie didn't do well by Disney juggernaut standards but still is beloved, he said, "There is this phrase—it comes from a musical, yes—it says, I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing."

And I just put my hand over my mouth and closed my eyes because, yes.

Yes this was what I needed to hear, but also, yes someone was quoting [title of show] on my favorite podcast, a confluence that was almost too much to bear.

[title of show] has had many incarnations and iterations, but it came into my life in its off-Broadway run at the Vineyard Theater (where my best friend was working at the time, so I saw the show three or four times? I loved it dearly). Before that, it was in a festival. After that, it was on Broadway. And at each stage, the show metamorphosed and transformed and expanded to fit its moment like a hungry paramecium, because [title of show] is a musical about its own creation. It's a musical about two friends writing a musical about two friends writing a musical. It's extremely cute and self-referential, with catchy songs and a million jokes and allusions, and it's also a profound exploration of what it means—and what it takes—to make art. 

The song Larry Owens was quoting comes at a dark moment, when the show is about to open... off-Broadway, I think? In the iteration you're currently watching? And the writer/performers feel that deep moment of fear: What if no one likes what we made? The composer sings to his lyricist:

When we set out to write this musical
We said we’d write a show that we wanna see
We knew we’d never please everyone
Remember that day at Gristedes
You said to me...
I’d rather be nine people’s favorite thing
Than a hundred people’s ninth favorite thing

Granted, I would like to be (both myself and my book) everyone's favorite thing, but then I have to remember that that doesn't exist. 

All of the best advice about writing (or making art) involves separating the creation from its reception. Dance like nobody's watching, write the book you'd want to read, don't try to generate and edit at the same time. But I can't pretend this project is an entirely expressive exercise. First of all, a lot of why I'm writing it (especially in the midst of an incredibly inconvenient pandemic) is because someone has given me some money and in exchange I will give them the rights to publish this book, with the idea that people will pay to read it. ("Those nine people will tell nine people / Then we’ll have eighteen people loving the show / Then eighteen people could grow into / Five-hundred and twenty-five-thousand, six-hundred people / Loving our show," we hope and pray.) I'm writing this book because I want to write it, but at this point, I'm also writing it because it is my job.

Contracts aside, though, I want people to read my book. Yes, there's a lot of pleasure in the work of writing, in figuring out ideas and discovering connections, in learning a whole load of science, in communicating that science in hopefully aesthetically pleasing ways—in making something new. But I also am writing this for people to read. Money aside, career aside, this book isn't for me, it's for other people. So, I remind myself: maybe only nine of them. 

Creative expression is precious but we shouldn't ignore the urge to give something to people, to show them the world in an interesting or new way. But the important reminder is: They don't all have to like it. They don't all have to get it. It can be weird, it can be nichey, it can be something that plenty of people think is bad. But there are probably nine people out there who will—because you risked turning off all the other people—fucking love it.

I can't write about Larry Owens quoting [title of show] without also writing about A Strange Loop, the musical I saw Larry Owens in... pretty soon before lockdown? It was summer 2019, but I was seeing plays so rarely, what with a baby at home, that it might've been the last play I saw before lockdown, or close to it. A Strange Loop is another testament to following your creative impulses into dangerous places—it's another musical about writing a musical, too, but instead of four cheery white people trying to write a musical about writing a musical, it's about a self-loathing Black gay guy trying to write a musical that speaks honestly to his own experience, to his own heart—while his mother is trying to get him to write a Tyler Perry gospel musical, and his agent is trying to get him to write... a Tyler Perry gospel musical. 

I can't tell you how bravely that show tells every creative vampire thought to just absolutely fuck off. It's impossible to capture in summary, though a listen to the cast recording would probably be amazing even if you haven't seen it on stage. (I definitely spent late summer singing some of those songs to Miles, which I probably can't do anymore now that he understands, and repeats, words.) But it was obviously written through and despite the fear that it would be hated. And toward the hope that it would also be understood.

(Just thinking about how the first public writing I ever did was theater-blogging. Anyway!)

(Also, after drafting this, I absolutely made Miles listen to A Strange Loop in the car home from daycare. At least it was the first half of the album? Iykyk.)

Nothing I ever write will be as dangerous as A Strange Loop, which is reassuring, in a way: What am I so scared of? All we can do is write the thing we want to see in the world, make the thing we want to make, and let it be strange, so that just a few people (+/- nine) might love it more than anything else.

Back to [title of show], near the end of the song, they sing:

And maybe someday if we’re lucky enough
We’ll all be in a studio recording the show
And ten years from now when we play the cast album
This track on the CD
Will remind us of why we’d rather be
Nine peoples favorite thing
Than a hundred peoples ninth favorite thing

I did the math, and I was listening to the album, now, fifteen years after they recorded it.