My Favorite Lines from the 36 Questions Podcast Musical
Cosplaying as an English major
A quick summary can be found on the Wikipedia page, but I’ll provide one here anyway.
Act 1. Judith tells us she’s been lying to her husband Jase for the last two years, calling herself “Natalie” and hiding her past. Jase walks out, leaving their wedding ring and returning to his mothers’ old house. Judith tracks him down, and claims that the eponymous 36 questions can save their marriage.
Act 2. Through her answer to question 10 (“If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?”) Judith reveals her past; her abusive parents had an unhealthy disregard for the truth. We also learn that her deception unraveled when they finally tracked her down; she’d been “in hiding,” as it were. She created “Natalie” — someone with a completely different history — when they first met. It seems like the couple is moving past their issues, but Jase decides that he cannot stay with her and walks out once again before completing the second half of the questions.
Act 3. Judith realizes that it has to be Jase who makes the first move, and leaves. Through multiple timeskips, we hear Jase listening to old recordings of their conversations, regretting his past decisions. Years later, after marrying once again, having a child, and getting divorced, Jase completes the questions and sends a PDF to Judith. They meet and Jase reads his answers out loud to Judith. Then they separate.
I highly recommend 36 Questions — you can listen to it here. Links to the timestamps at which the quoted lines are sung are included.
tw: mention of drug abuse
I loved her, too, as much as you
And she'd want you to bury her with me
- Judith Ford, Natalie Cook
My first observation: all my favorite lines are Judith’s lines. Although her character in the actual musical seems over-the-top at times, I think she’s far more relatable than Jase is. She’s the more obviously flawed of the two characters.
In Natalie Cook, Judith gives Jase her forged documents — everything with the name “Natalie” — and tells him to burn them all. As she says, the “ritual” is “a way of saying, this now lives in memory.”
36 Questions is about Judith. It’s about her life story — her childhood, surrounded by pathological liars; her twenties, floundering in New York, struggling with drug dependency and loneliness; her time with Jase, where she began to love herself, where she put her abuse and addiction behind her; and the aftermath, chronicled by the musical itself.
I loved her, too, as much as you — Judith is “I”; Natalie is “her”; Jase is “you.” Judith found herself able to love only Natalie, a sanitized version of Judith; Natalie, whose story remains unmarred by Judith’s traumas.
And she’d want you to bury her with me — Natalie Cook is rather overt about the idea that Judith considers Natalie a separate person, birthed on the day she met Jase and killed by their first separation. I think a more interesting idea present in the line is that Natalie would want both Judith and Jase to bury her together.
Identity formation is an important topic in metaphysics. Hilde Lindemann writes the following about her younger sister Carla, who suffered from a severe case of hydrocephaly that rendered her, for most intents and purposes, unable to speak and move:
Each of us in the family, I daresay, saw Carla in a slightly different light. Acting on our various conceptions of who she was, we made a place for her among us, treating her according to how we saw her, and in so treating her, making her into even more of the person we saw. Because I played with her, she was my playmate. Because my mother cared for her at home, she was a member of the household. There were five of us engaged in the narrative work of forming and preserving Carla’s identity, and while many of the stories were ones we shared in common, we all added individual bits and pieces of our own. […] We were holding her in personhood.
[…]
But it’s here that we have to ask the question of how it make sense to construct a personal identity for someone who can contribute nothing to her own personhood. Can we truthfully say that Carla had any personhood for us to acknowledge? Isn’t “person” simply an honorific that the rest of us bestowed on her[?]1
Consider the following lines of dialogue from the song:
Jase: I don't see why I have to join your little cremation ceremony. You're the one who made her up.
Judith: It was a bit more collaborative than you're remembering.
They’re talking about Natalie — Jase’s wife, Judith’s better half. Judith’s impulse creation during their first meeting hardly emerged a fully-fledged person. As she spent more time with and as Natalie, as she and Natalie talked and spent time with and fell in love with Jase, Natalie the person formed.
And because they constructed her together, building her personality with Judith’s as a baseline, adapting it based on Jase’s actions and reactions, Natalie would want them to bury her together.
My father fancied himself a sailor
His study was filled with nautical décor
- Judith Ford, Our Word
Our Word is my favorite song of the musical, and it’s not close. I love how it introduces us to Judith’s parents and her childhood, and I’d urge any reader to listen to the song in its entirety — it stands well on its own.
I like this line specifically more for its wordplay, though, although there are plot points too.
fancied | décor
Judith’s father is engaging in a bit of harmless self-deception (there’s that motif again!) — imagining himself a sailor — and the writers Littler and Winter found a wonderfully clever choice of words. The word “décor” itself is rather highbrow; “fancy,” as it were.
a funny juxtaposition
We’re introduced to the idea of Judith’s father thinking he’s a sailor. Great! What’s she going to sing about next — taking her out on boating trips? Nope — the line pivots straight to his “study,” certainly a word not generally associated with sailing. Moreover, “office,” “room,” “bedroom” certainly could fit the line and the previous idea, but the alliteration between “sailor” and “study” gives it a really pleasant rhythm.
consonance
I think one of the reasons the song is so catchy for me is the consonance. My father fancied himself a sailor; his study was filled with nautical décor. Littler and Winter furnish these syllables with an abundance of s and f-sounds.
foreshadowing
Overtly, the idea of Judith’s father being a “fake sailor,” as it were, is linked to a later line: we haven't been on our boat in some years now, Judith’s parents say, defending her from (presumably) some accusation leveled toward her.
More subtly, the language we looked at initially — “fancied,” “décor,” — sets up the notion that Judith comes from an incredibly wealthy family, who could afford to pay money to “make the problems go away.”
I heard music in the words you were saying
Melodies with no band playing
For the first time, I was in love
And I loved who I was with you
- Judith Ford, A Better Version
The first half of this line I love — clichés and all. The notion of speech as music, as melody — ever-present.
If there’s anything I’d like to note regarding that first half, it’s that readers should listen to the entire buildup to it. This is the longest, warmest melody so far in the song. There’s some speech; there’s some singing where Judith doesn’t really put any weight behind the words, and they feel rather wispy and discretized (forgive me for the terminology abuse, I’m not a music major); there’s full vocal lines, but always with a pause between them. No breaks between “saying” and “melodies”; no hesitation in her voice; no pauses, interruptions, speech — I think the flow is incredible.
The second half: the overt theme is Judith’s self-love issue. Again, a detail — in the last line, she takes brief pauses after “loved” and “was.”
The first pause: is she going to reiterate how much she loved Jase? That wouldn’t be so farfetched — the entire song so far has been about how their relationship began. No, she pivots to loving who she was.
The second pause: she lets us think about that — the notion that she’s finally begun to love herself — and then clarifies, wistfully, that she loves who she is with him. Small steps.
I love the way they write songs — I wish I could be a songwriter. Maybe it’s not too late?
You deserve to get to know
The person you're trying your damnedest to let go
- Judith Ford, Hear Me Out
I deserve to let you go
And build a better version on my own
- Judith Ford, Answer 36
Just a bit of context: the first song comes from the beginning of act 1, when Judith is standing at Jase’s door. The second song comes from the beginning of act 3, when Jase has left Judith.
I won’t patronize the reader by pointing out the obvious similarities in the lines, with respect to either the words or the music. In fact, I’m not sure there’s much I can actually say that isn’t apparent — Judith’s growth, with respect to self-love, really shines. (Answer 36 is also her last solo song!)
I will point out the following: it almost seems the musical could have just ended here, compressed into two acts, with Judith as the main character learning to move on. A few things make this infeasible:
The most obvious one: the writers believe Jase, as a character, needed a chance to grow. I admit to fully embracing the idea that he’s a side character in her story, but unfortunately for my headcanon he’s actually just as important as her.
Less obvious: there’s a major theme of threes in this musical. See Natalie’s age; Judith’s screwups; Judith's unfiltered honesty; the number of times Jase says goodbye. Act 3 is necessary for the three major parts of Judith’s life — before Jase, during their relationship, and after he leaves permanently.
Structurally: we needed an act full of mostly solo songs. Acts 1 and 2 are filled with songs the couple sings together or directly to each other — although sometimes unwillingly — and Act 3 beginning with Judith’s last solo song, followed by Jase’s last two solo songs, is rather necessary to emphasize their separation. (Of course, they meet once more at the end.)
I think this is genuinely my favorite musical so far and I’d really encourage anyone reading this to listen to it! Any thoughts would be appreciated. :)
From Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal Identities.