Socrates! The Musical

I've been dying to wax philosophical on this blog. I'll get all dreamy, drowsy and I'll think: hey, i bet everyone wants to hear what I think about the impossibility of comprehending the "moment". Yes, yes, we can "live in the present" but we can't comprehend it. When we do, it is, by definition, already passed. It's kind of like an Uncertainty Principle for living. You can't know and do at the same time.

This is why some people drop routine flyballs in baseball. They're thinking about it, instead of just doing it. That's why people get "in the zone" in sports or work or life, because they are not thinking about it, they're just doing it.

But I don't think you want to hear my pseudo-philosophical musings.

You want to hear about the future Tony Award winning show: Socrates! The Musical. It's the story of, who else, Socrates, and his crazy zany life as the gadlfy of Athens.

Here are some highlights:

It opens at Socrates' famous hangout with the song, I Like It Here (in the Symposium) performed by Socrates, Phaedrus, and Alcibiades. [Because I'm not a composer, I've based my songs on existing tunes such as America from West Side Story.]

Alcibiades also sings of his brotherly love for Socrates with I Could Have Talked All Night.

Featuring his long-suffering wife, Xanthippe, singing the powerful Don't Cry for Me, Peloponnesus.

After many adventures around the city, Socrates is arrested and brought to trial for corrupting the city's youth: Once in Love with Ganymede (sung by Socrates) and I've Grown Accustomed to His Questioning (a young Plato sings this.)

The emotional finale takes place around Socrates' death bed. There is a dance sequence driven by the song One Sip of Hemlock (think One Night in Bangkok from Chess.) Socrates drinks the poison and dies as the cast quietly sings, building to a crescendo:

When humanity questions big ideas
And the answers are hard to find
We take the first steps to happiness
By trying to free our minds

This is the dawning of the Age of Philosophy
Age of Philosophy
Philosophy!
Philosophy!

All right, all right, I'll stop.

But if you have other Broadway songs that I could fit in here, I'd love to hear them.