“ No More”…A Last Goodbye To My Friend, Steven.
Joel B. Levine MD
Dear Steve,
I suspect you would not be thrilled with me writing this to you in a public space. I just called my son, as he was about to call me, to tell the other of your death. For the years that we lived near each other, for the friendship that formed, for the profound sense of loss that we feel now, I wanted to say a more visible goodbye.
You were just a lovely man, gracious and kind even when you were torn with the tensions of creating. There was a rule that I would not ask how things were going. Your process was furiously exacting and burdened with uncertainty. You never assumed it would all turn out right. Rather you pressed even harder when you thought the muse would leave you. Imagine Shakespeare’s hand starting to tremble when the next word or phase would just not come. Seeing the privacy of your art always affirmed the risk and courage it took to get it exactly right. No one knew but you and you never cheated. That alone was remarkable and so admirable. Stephen Sondheim never settled for being Stephen Sondheim.
Celebrity has become one of the cheaper commodities to buy. Hardly earned, it is predictably fleeting. No one expects anything to endure. In fact, living in a moment, displaced by the next fad, is our faux passion reality. You were not much far any of that. You set your own traps by setting the next bar even higher. Nothing made you step away even as every new creation scared the wits out of you.
For most of us, just one of your shows, one of your songs would have been enough. Only today, when we are forced, for the first time to look back, does the enormity of your work show itself. It is quite beyond understanding that one mind and heart gave so much about us in an art matched only by the Sonnets.
There are many who will write more cogently of your skills. Indeed, whenever I would start to wax about something, you would say that it was only craft. You were trained in the mathematics of music and used its precision the way Rembrandt used the physics of light. In time, those who now see complexity will come to understand your devotion to clarity. That was the word you used as the only measure of your intention.
Above all, you were just a good guy; a generous, vulnerable and accessible man. Some of your own life’s memories were very hard for you. Some of your life experiences during the years of our friendship were wrenching. But you never struck a false note. You never hid beyond a costume, never became faceless in the chorus. You never lost your generosity, which is often the first to go when life hurts us.
Until today, my son and I would talk about you with an expectation. I have a very bad habit of not looking back when I leave one life for the next. Every few months I would take out one of the notes we exchanged since I left Roxbury and promise myself I would reconnect. The old memories were both good and strong and I always thought that there could always be more.
‘ No More” is the title of one of the most poignant songs from “ Into The Woods”. I realized yesterday that I imagined that there would always be more. There always was, until now.
I remember when you asked me to go the previews of one of your shows. With another friend, we were to be honest brokers. So after, we all met in a nearby restaurant. It was late when I walked in and the manager said he was about to close. I said that we were waiting for you. In a moment, he came back and said that everyone refused to leave. Respect makes fame look cheap.
Above all, I remember walking our dogs, two black standard poodles. You loved Oscar, took such joy from his gracefulness and sweet nature. It is a nice memory, on a country lane, with a man who will endure as the master cartographer to being human.
