God, the Bishop and "God"
Caution: things may get meta
Throughout his career, Sondheim consistently produced work that resisted reductive interpretations. He actively pushed against being mythologized as a singular artistic "genius" and other simple simple valorizations of his work. In 2010, longtime collaborator James Lapine was devising a new revue of Sondheim's works, "Sondheim on Sondheim," when he ran into trouble figuring out an act two opener and asked Sondheim to contribute a new song. Sondheim describes his approach to the new song in "Look I Made a Hat",
Embarrassed (although flattered) at having an evening not just of my work but with me as the photographed host, I immediately fell into a familiar self-deprecating mode and wrote the following number (ed: "God") which was suggested by a New York magazine headline that had asked the unanswerable camp question "Is Sondheim God?" (ed: April 4, 1994) (Sondheim 332)
The song is charming: a chorus reverently asserts Sondheim is "god" - a nickname that clung to him for years - only to have the assertion bounce thuddingly off the interstitial segments of quotidian fussiness about blackwing pencils, legal pads and fingernail clippings that are positioned throughout the song. By re-inserting "Steve" into a conversation venerating "Sondheim," the dissonance becomes clear. Those that deify "Sondheim" put him in a reliquary - genius to be admired for the sake of genius just like the polished leather books Marianne admires "not to read, " but for "the way it looks".
Of course, vast oceans of depth are missed when only the "look" of genius is admired. An illuminating anecdote from "Finale" highlights the kind of nuanced meanings that Sondheim encoded in his work as well as potentially the frustration he felt when they were overlooked. Throughout the book, critic D.T. Max continuously tried to impress Sondheim by sharing rhymes he had developed. As the book continues, he grows increasingly frustrated with Sondheim's dismissals of his rhymes as slant rhymes and tries to find one in Sondheim's oeuvre.
When Max excitedly thinks he has finally caught a slant rhyme Sondheim employed in "Bounce," he treats it as a "gotcha" moment. However, Sondheim is quick to remind Max that the rhyme in question was "sung by a dying man with slurred speech in a state of dementia" and that he should "lower [his] eyebrow and pay attention". Fundamentally, this is the message at the heart of Here We Are - by engaging with art fully, with our "eyebrows lowered" we allow ourselves to find meaning that we'd otherwise flippantly reject. Irony, as Sondheim notes in his introduction to "Look I Made a Hat," is context, intended to not be the terminal emotion but to signpost that a deeper meaning lies beyond the surface incongruence or deconstruction.
All of this sets the stage for the state of mind Sondheim apparently was in while writing Here We Are. In an interview conducted by Max, the composer confides his insecurities about his position as elder statesman of musical theater.
...I just feel less inventive. And, also, I feel I've written it before. "Oh I've used that." Also the constant feeling, which is not unreal, of being old-fashioned.
[...] And it holds me back, because I think I'm gonna be a fool in public. I remember making fun of Victor Herbert and Rudolf Friml with my father. There were two kinds of musicals in the '20s. There were the kick-'em-up, chorus line musicals, and the smartass ones I like like Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter, and then there were the operettas. My father loved operettas, and I thought, "Oh, c'mon! this old-fashioned shit!" I still think it's old-fashioned shit, but nevertheless. Now I'm old-fashioned shit! (Max 142-145)
It's a tough spot to be in, but a familiar one if you've been paying attention. Much like Sondheim, the Bishop in Here We Are finds himself trying to uncover meaning only to be dismissed as a relic that nobody is interested in. Consider the closing lines from "The Bishop's Song":
All I want is a job where I'd be of some use where I'd know who I was where I'd make people feel like they matter although none of us does in the big picture, I mean
Something different at least. God knows, I'm a terrible priest. And if anyone should know, God knows it's God.
Note that the pun about how if "anyone should know God knows it's God" seems to wink at the limitations of Sondheim's omniscience in the same manner that "God" from "Sondheim on Sondheim" does.
Although it takes most of the evening, Marianne does eventually sit down with the bishop who gets a chance to minister to her. What makes him believe himself to be a terrible priest - his "lack of clarity", his "old-fashionedness" are exactly what Marianne needs to hear in order to expand beyond her limited perspective and meaningfully make changes that broaden the scope of what the "core six" can conceptualize. It's a redemption not just for the bishop when he realizes that he is actually a pretty good priest, but for the underlying richness that Sondheim has encoded in all of his works - for those willing to lower their eyebrows and pay attention.