Cats Night Round 2
When it comes to Cats, my love is for every production I've encoubtered. I need say no more about the 2019 film for I think I've said it all, several times, at great detail. I've further worn our fairly warm out compact cassette copies[1] of the original Broadway cast (tape one isn't even really worth listening to anymore, but tape two has McCavity, Skimbleshanks and Memory, so you make do). I've got both the London and Broadway cast recordings on vinyl (London is my preference, but I don't have to choose so I don't).
And then there is the 1998 cast recording. The only way I'll ever experience it live. I'll always pick the theatrical movie, I'm much more about film than I am about stage. But state is still such a treat. And this recording is simply very good.
My mother wanted to watch Cats with me. There's a lot of that going around, and I cannot fault anyone for wanting to share it with me. It became so important to me at such a strange time in all our lives. Watching a stage recording with someone else feels more alive and real than watching it alone, not like the real thing, which is a capital R regret, but even one other spectator added so much to my experience.
It's Cats. It was beautiful. There were no dry eyes in the house after Memory, as it should be. I'm glad I've been able to share this with my family, because I'd honestly put this fixation largely behind me, terrified that it no longer had emotional power over me.
That fear was unfounded, I loved every second of sharing this weird period in my life with my loved ones. A small r regret is that I didn't do it sooner.
I forgot I kept my traveling stage show Mistoffolees holo ticket, and now they were scrapbooking (digitally and irl) I'm so glad I'm a pack rat. Mr. Mistoffolees is my cat, and it feels so right (even though Thomasin is absolutely a 1998 Jennyanydots)
[1]: I bought the cassettes because I was looking for long lengths of tape to make tape loops out of as part of an extremely lofi synth set up I was building (built the synth, built some tape toys, never made those loop tapes), so the first Cats thing I bought, the tapes, I bought explicitly to destroy because I was confident, so fucking confident, I'd never want or need them. That they were less worthy of preservation than the same Anne Murry tape that was in every store a dozen times. This is just a lesson that it is possible to be as most wrong about something as possible, and somehow, stumble back into the right path. The world is a wild and wonderful and beautiful place, and it is good and glorious to make mistakes, but also to make magically somehow avoid making the same mistake so many times they you end up with a deeply treasured possession. Sometimes luck is just with you.