darcy doesn’t sing a single note even during conversations where everyone else is singing at him that is until the argument following his first attempt at proposing to lizzy where you can see his restraint fall away
his first big solo is the letter he writes her
gelsey bell is mary and the unofficial narrator and she sits down at her piano to describe whats going on but before she can ever reveal her feelings on the matter, starting with that gelsey bell scream, mr bennet comes over and does the whole ‘that’s nice dear but give someone else a turn’
mr wickham has this huge ballad about how darcy ruined his life and its super melodramatic and touching
mr collins proposal to lizzy is an absolute bop that he gets so into he forgets for a moment what he’s doing he’s just owning the stage
wickham has a song where he’s trying to seduce lydia but she’s not even listening she’s just monologuing about how excited she is to get laid
during darcy’s second proposal he keeps hesitating waiting for lizzy to interrupt him like she has done every time before but she doesn’t say anything until he’s finished
at the end mary sits down at the piano and right where she’d usually be interrupted, kitty joins her and harmonises
jane and bingley have the adorable upbeat romantic duet which is just them being super polite like ‘oh so nice to have you here’ ‘so nice to be here’ interspersed with their inner monologue which is just them being like fucking jesus I’m so in love
the bingley sisters probably have a really cool mean solo
lady catherine has this terrifying disney villain song in the garden
Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they’re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they’re barely keeping their head above water.
(This happens to me all the time; it’s approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)
I think one thing that’s going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don’t have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.
It’s useful to think of these things as load-bearing. They’re not just nice – they’re part of your mental architecture, they’re part of what you’re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it’s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. “Oh,” I say to myself after months of fatigue, “having my own private space was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a scary drop in weight, “being able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, “a quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.”
When you know what’s important to you, you can fight for it, or at least be equipped to notice right away if it goes and some of your ability to thrive goes with it. When you don’t, or when you’re thinking of all these things as ‘nice things about my life’ rather than ‘load-bearing bits of my flourishing as a person’, you’re not likely to notice the strain created when they vanish until you’re really, really hurting.
Almost two weeks after reading this, and I’m still kind of blown away at what a ridiculously fruitful definition this is. Like I had no idea that load bearing things were a thing that needed to have a word for them, but now I’m like holy shit I’m so glad that there’s now a word I can use to refer to this really important class of Thing.
This is astounding. Load-bearing. Forget spoons, this concept is wonderful. I’m going to update my Spear Theory with this.
Jab loves robots 