Waving Through A Window: Dear Evan Hansen

Waving Through A Window: Dear Evan Hansen Lamentation by the most effortless technical soloist, Platt, and a legendary composing duo, Pasek and Paul.

Mad props to Benj Pasek and Justin Paul for pumping out La la land, Dear Evan Hansen, and Greatest Showman between 2016 and 2018. TWO YEARS. A signature texture you’ll notice is the rhythmic piano with short vocal bursts. Just as it opens here. It’s particularly effective because it’s paced in a way that feels very natural. It’s even more fitting here because the character being played is a shy middle schooler in a musical about not belonging and the feeling that nobody notices him. Another detail that I didn’t notice until I heard Ben Platt attempting to cover Hamilton is his tight edgy vibrato is natural. Good casting.

The song opens with a classic Benj Pasek and Justin Paul texture. Yes, the same people behind the music for La la land, Dear Evan Hansen, and Greatest Showman; that’s 2 years! The short burst of vocals overlaid on rhythmic piano. What makes it so fitting is because it feels naturally paced. Like it’s something that the character has been thinking about but hasn’t placed words to. And the most remarkable thing about mental health, at least in my experience, is how difficult yet healing it is to learn to articulate the experience.

In my own experience, I went skiing for the first time two weeks after I realized I was depressed. I can relate to both feeling like I was the victim of my own death wish and hyper-aware of my own incompetence. Then after dislocating a shoulder in the middle of the mountain having not yet learned how to turn or slowdown other than wiping out. This really resonates with the notion of waving through a window while “While I’m watch, watch, watching people pass.”

Continuing on about the opening, the lyrics are “I’ve learned to slam on the brake,” which isn’t at all a bad thing in and of itself. But then, with each phrase it gets darker and spirals inwards. Unfortunately this is a decent depiction of what happens in a depressive and anxiety disordered mind. It goes from slamming the brake to fear of making a mistake to devaluing oneself. This spiral can quickly turn ordinary thoughts into quite frightening ones.

I will say the most unsettling part was not that arm didn’t fit into my shoulder cuff anymore, but meeting a side of me I could barely recognize. The old me would probably would not have gone to the top of the mountain unaccompanied. And, the old me would have cared enough about my well being to have asked for help when I eventually became injured. But, the me that found itself soaked in rain and freezing at the fingertips simply didn’t care anymore. It’s like the numbness of my fingertips were the result of the numbness in my heart that no glove would eased even if I hadn’t lost mine. The saddest part about depression isn’t that I felt sad, it was that I was so numbed by the sadness that I couldn’t feel anything other than it.

And that’s the burden I carry, the constant threat that tomorrow I’d wake up with such a strong desire to have never been born that I’d not be able to stop myself from making that thought my last.

The second element that this song captures well is as the name suggest: waving through a window. The numbness is a trap. I’ve once even called it the foggiest shitty insta filter as if everything had raindrops all over it; a place where “the sun doesn’t rise”. Simultaneously, there’s a part of me that was “tapping on the glass,” desperate for someone to understand much less the numbness to stop. Literally, cause I was so new to the experience I didn’t have the words to speak, so “I try to speak, but nobody can hear.”

The most brilliantly dramatic moment (it is musical theater after all) is the 2 beat of absolute silence which interrupt Ben Platt belting. He repeatedly thinks to himself

When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around
Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?

each time louder and with more choral accompaniment. The last phrase before the silence he asks “Will I ever make a sound?” It particularly powerful as the focus goes from if I crash will anyone notice to

And silence is deafening when there are voices in my head screaming to be let out.

Also, embedded in the question is an existential question of am I even being noticed. And, it’s evil twin, if I disappeared would anyone even flinch. A thought that I bet crosses every depressive mind is the fear of being a burden to those closes to us. In all honesty the thought that “sure friends and family will be downed for a bit, but if they truly understood they would agree the temporary grief pales in comparison to the never ending suffering.”

But alas, the window is sound proof but not suicide-proof.

Lyrics:

I’ve learned to slam on the brake
Before I even turn the key
Before I make the mistake
Before I lead with the worst of me

Give them no reason to stare
No slipping up if you slip away
So I got nothing to share
No, I got nothing to say

Step out, step out of the sun
If you keep getting burned
Step out, step out of the sun
Because you’ve learned, because you’ve learned

On the outside, always looking in
Will I ever be more than I’ve always been?
‘Cause I’m tap, tap, tapping on the glass
I’m waving through a window
I try to speak, but nobody can hear
So I wait around for an answer to appear
While I’m watch, watch, watching people pass
I’m waving through a window, oh
Can anybody see, is anybody waving back at me?

We start with stars in our eyes
We start believing that we belong
But every sun doesn’t rise
And no one tells you where you went wrong

Step out, step out of the sun
If you keep getting burned
Step out, step out of the sun
Because you’ve learned, because you’ve learned

On the outside, always looking in
Will I ever be more than I’ve always been?
‘Cause I’m tap, tap, tapping on the glass
Waving through a window
I try to speak, but nobody can hear
So I wait around for an answer to appear
While I’m watch, watch, watching people pass
Waving through a window, oh
Can anybody see, is anybody waving?

When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around
Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?
When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around
Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?
When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around
Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?
When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around
Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?
Did I even make a sound?
Did I even make a sound?
It’s like I never made a sound
Will I ever make a sound?

On the outside, always looking in
Will I ever be more than I’ve always been?
‘Cause I’m tap, tap, tapping on the glass
Waving through a window
I try to speak, but nobody can hear
So I wait around for an answer to appear
While I’m watch, watch, watching people pass
Waving through a window, oh
Can anybody see, is anybody waving back at me? (oh)

Is anybody waving?
Waving, waving, whoa-oh, whoa-oh

The AMAZING Seth Rudetsky discussing the amazing details:

The brake vs brakes was a brilliant gem; I also had the privilege of watching disaster on Broadway in which Seth performed. An early rendition ------------------

Link to a transcription with piano accompaniment: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4T7TH6Rr-HXbFNxaWFkU2t3a2c/view