BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change at TCBmag.com
Carnac holds an envelope to his forehead. “Sondheim Rhyme & Tebow Time,” he says. Ed McMahon echoes, in his trademark basso mundo, “Sondheim Rhyme & Tebow Time.” Carnac looks askance and then blows open the envelope to read the question . .
Sorry, you’ll have to wait for it until I’m done writing this.
Stephen Sondheim, genius creator of stupendously artful, clever, and Tony award-winning musical theater, wrote a book (Finishing the Hat) a while back, and then another recently (Look, I Made A Hat). Both are really wonderful perspectives/critiques on writing, composing, thinking, and creating. Sondheim, who wrote many smash shows—Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, West Side Story, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, and Sunday in the Park with George—pens his masterpieces using the following three mantras:
1.) Content dictates form,
2.) Less is more, and
3.) God is in the details.
Most certainly, lessons we can all take to the bank.
In lay terms, “content dictates form” means: Know what you want to say (content) before you decide how (form) to say it. Sondheim, a writer of calculation, was built to write. He, a brilliant and only child of absent parents—meaning lots of time to think, write, imagine, and fantasize. Where else could Sweeney Todd have found a home? Safe bet, not in Tim Tebow’s rec room.
Unlike Sondheim, Tebow, the iconoclastic, whooda-thunk quarterback of the Denver Broncos, has the same tendencies most sales people do, i.e., think and react on your feet, survival by spontaneity, not knowing from one moment to the next what to expect. When Tebow lines up behind center it’s like taking a mountain curve at 75 mph with no clue what’s around the bend. It’s like biting into a Buffalo Wild Wings “blazing” drummie for the first time. It’s the equivalent of a Van Morrison scat . . . ”Ding a ling a ling, a ling, ding a ling a ling, let it all hang out.”
In a word, yikes. If there is a Higgs-Boson particle in the NFL, it’s Tebow.
Tebow was not ideally suited for quarterbacking, born with a fullback’s body whose passes flub through the air like water balloons at a frat party. And, his ubiquitous evangelism is certainly not the DNA of someone attracted to a brutal and often vicious sport. But somehow he’s found convergence between spouting passages from Revelations and Corinthians while running past or through steroid-laced philistines.
The one place where the erudite Sondheim and trippy Tebow match up like hats and George Seurat is in “God is in the details.” Although Sondheim’s God may well be of the hard-to-put-a-finger-on ilk, Tebow buys direct, no middleman. But for each, God plays a starring role, framing Sondeheim’s clever dry’s and wry’s, as well as Tebow’s unreal two-minute drills. No doubt an odd couple, but two you can’t take your eyes off.
Oh, the question to Carnac’s answer . . . “Sondheim Rhyme & Tebow Time”?
What makes God text “OMG”?
Editor’s Note: Gary Johnson is President of MSP Communications in Minneapolis, MN and authors the blog Loose Change.