Personal History: Using A Sondheim Song Title
I don’t have a good sense of where most of my drawings come from. Mostly, they just show up, and I put ’em down on cheap paper. The above drawing does have a small bit of a past — at least the caption does. My mother was a fan of Frank Sinatra. While growing up I think it’s safe to say that, for awhile, our home record collection was about 50/50: 50% Beatles albums (all mine), and 50% Sinatra (all hers). An album she played over and over again was Sinatra’s comeback lp, Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back (Reprise, 1973). I locked in on one of the songs,“Send in the Clowns” because of Sinatra’s spoken intro:
This is a song about a couple of adult people who have spent, oh, quite a long time
together, till one day
one of ’em gets restless and decides to leave. Whether it’s the man or woman who left is unimportant.
It’s a breakup.
It’s a lovely marriage of words and music, written by Stephen Sondheim.
The intro, and the song, stuck around in my inventory of memories and then one day, in the most unlikely mash-up, the song’s title presented itself to me as a caption for the above drawing (caption and drawing arrived at my desk simultaneously). It was published in The New Yorker February 8, 2016.
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Latest Cartoon Caption Contest Podcast Guest: Drew Dernavich
Drew Dernavich makes a return trip to the Cartoon Caption Contest Podcast. Hear it here.
Mr. Dernavich began contributing to The New Yorker in 2002. Visit his website here.
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The Tilley Watch Online, The Week Of November 22-26, 2012
— An end of week listing of New Yorker artists who contributed to newyorker.com features. Non-print contributors are noted.
The Daily Cartoon: Erika Sjule (an online contributor), Teresa Burns Parkhurst. Sarah Kempa (an online contributor), Farley Katz, Lars Kenseth.
Daily Shouts Cartoonist: Jake Goldwasser.
…and Barry Blitt’s Kvetchbook: “Turkey-Hands Of The Stars!”