Days and Days from FUN HOME

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Days and Days from FUN HOME

Posted: 10/31/16 at 2:51pm

Had a long drive this weekend and listened to a few recordings, including FUN HOME for the first time in a while.

The one song in the show that now confuses me is Days and Days. I like the song – might even be my favorite along with Telephone Wire – but I’m now confused by the meaning. I used to hear to it as a very negative, anti-gay song (“Don’t you come back here.&rdquo, with Helen taking out her misery on Medium Allison, as if because of Bruce’s closeted sexuality and dalliances that Helen has a negative view of all gays and she’ll never be accepting. I heard it differently this weekend. It heard it being more positive from Helen to Allison, with the mother being exhausted from all the sadness and unpleasant surprises, but yet trying to rally and encourage her daughter that it’s ok she’s gay, but please, please take a different path from that of your father.

Whether Tesori and Kron intended the more optimistic reading of the song that’s what I now get from it. And I’m glad. Given my own struggles early in my life to recognize and accept my homosexuality, I was affected profoundly by the show. My life has turned out happy after the struggles, and that’s what I want to see for Allison, too.

I’m often “late to the party” in uncovering meanings in theater and art, but I get there eventually!

Days and Days from FUN HOME

Posted: 10/31/16 at 2:55pm

I never thought it was her being anti-gay. I thought it was more like how Helen wasted her life in this town or didn't truly live and didn't want Alison to do the same.

Days and Days from FUN HOME

Posted: 10/31/16 at 2:58pm

Yeah, I really can't see how anyone could interpret "Don't you come back here / I didn't raise you / To give away your days / Like me" as homophobic.

Helen is telling Allison to follow a different path than both herself and Bruce. Bruce lived a lie and suppressed his true identity, which caused him to act inappropriately out of frustration and self-loathing. Helen too has lived a lie -- she knew that her husband was gay, but kept up the charade of being a perfect wife, sacrificing all of her dreams in the process. She implores her daughter to live authentically in a why that neither she nor Bruce could.

"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe." -John Guare, Landscape of the Body

Days and Days from FUN HOME

Posted: 10/31/16 at 2:59pm

I never thought it had negative connotations from Helen to Alison at all. I always thought it was Helen telling Alison not to ‘throw away her days’ like she did, and to go for what she wants. Basically, life goes by so quickly, why spend it being miserable and stuck in a life you don’t want, or being someone that isn’t you? That’s how I took it anyway, so yeah I agree with you second assessment, but I think I can see how you assumed the first.

Days and Days from FUN HOME

Posted: 10/31/16 at 3:00pm

I concur....it's about standing up for herself and not settling. LIVING her life.

It's about regret, her own and wanting more for Alyson.

If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it? These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.

Days and Days from FUN HOME

Posted: 10/31/16 at 4:24pm

I'm glad you've had the chance to listen to the lyrics more closely now . I don't believe it even has anything to do with Alison being gay or not--other than incidentally . As others have said , it's about exhorting her daughter to live an authentic self and not settle for half a life.

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