There is a sharp inhale as the opening chords pour through the space, crashing over the hundreds of bodies impatiently awaiting action. There is a satisfied resonance unheard in any other tiny corner of the whole world. I watch as the sound hangs for a moment in the air around me, Iphones flicker off and all of the lonely, chatty, disorganized people suddenly quiet down in sincere unison. I am painfully aware of the peculiarity of this moment. I am painfully aware of each hair on both of my arms standing up with chills.

All from the opening chord. I let my eyelids flutter closed for a second, to be lost in my favorite moment, in my own world for just a tiny second. When I open them back up the moment has fleeted, but I encapsulate the feeling in my heart as I watch as it slips through the cracks between my fingers. My treasured second is over, the overture finishes with clarity. It’s overlooked and passed off as the waiting point. But I can hear it.

The eagerness, the passion, the beautiful sonatas and crescendos. I am a desperate believer in the capability of the overture. Distinctively, there are a few that I hold closest to my heart. The few laced with inspired words stick out in my unsystematic brain especially. Santa Fe, Newsies 2012. Of course, the orthodox overture remains, but it bleeds seamlessly into a gorgeous longing. A binary, a desire, an imagination, a dream. And Jack Kelly explodes off the blank forecast, and tears himself from his unprecedentedly grim future with his tired hands and begs you to understand his position. His place, his end all be all, his aspiration: Santa Fe. And every single person walks out of the theatre, and little boys adorn news caps on their heads, and some blue eyed teenage boy hangs a poster above his bed, he’ll achieve his dreams one day soon. Everyone wants to be Jack Kelly. Everyone wants to be the hero; the raw, emotional, hungry hero who steals every single heart. All because of those precious words that open the story like an author’s note inscribed in the inside cover. "Welcome home, son, welcome home to Santa Fe."

Everyone has an exceptional dream. For Jack Kelly, that extraordinary place is Santa Fe. His dream lies in a specific location between Albuquerque and Denver, a place he’s never been but knows in his soul that he needs to be. Jack Kelly’s appeal doesn’t come from good looks or charisma or charm. It comes from his irretrievable pursuit of Santa Fe. His voice trembles in sincerity as he pleads with himself, promising that he will never forget Santa Fe. He has to disregard the audience, be in a world where all that matters is this place, this passion, this insane longing. Jack Kelly’s destination is so specific, being a point on the map, being Santa Fe. But all of us, everyone waking up and battling life every single day has a Santa Fe. A place maybe, where you know you will end up one bright morning, a place you’ll soon stop having to wish for, because it will be yours. It is across the globe and you’ve only seen it’s beauty in pictures. Or closer than you think, but unattainable. A goal you set for yourself when you were eight years old with pigtails and the Wicked soundtrack on a C.D under your pillow. Maybe your Santa Fe is a person, someone whose eyes you look into and watch as they build a home around you. A person who you know is locked in your heart forever and ever and ever. Even when you didn’t have anything, when you felt homeless and alone. When you were on the side of the road, in a dark alley, freezing cold and trembling. You looked into those familiar eyes, and a home you never thought you had builds around you. Walls and ceilings and rooms and doors and love. That person is your Santa Fe. You could look at them in those same precious eyes and tell them how in love with them you truly are, and you are their Santa Fe too. Maybe your Santa Fe is a tiny corner of the world that is only yours. A place you can go and breath and remind yourself that it is all okay. Or maybe you imagine your Santa Fe every day when you go to bed and every morning when you wake up. You go there when you’ve had too many drinks or you feel like you can’t go on. You see your Santa Fe swirling in your morning coffee, across the stretch of the horizon, in the cracks of the crooked sidewalk. You see your Santa Fe when you sign the lease for your first apartment, or when you stand and let the refrigerator light pour around you and your toes at midnight when you just can’t sleep for another second. You find your Santa Fe in that muddled brain of yours and it’s okay, because one day you’ll land in Santa Fe, whatever that means to you, and you’ll be home.

I sometimes feel like I have one million Santa Fe’s. In my heart my Santa Fe is opening night on broadway, in ten years, and the talent pouring from the pores of starving artists as they make their broadway debut, and they sing the words I’ve built around the precarious melodies, and I get to sit in the audience and sob, it is my first moment of relaxation in ten years, it is worth it. My Santa Fe is a bookshelf lined with every book I’ve ever read in my whole entire life. It stretches for miles, around streets, and it has floors and levels and people stand back and gasp, this girl must’ve read every book in the world they say. But the special part is, I haven’t, I never will and that’s okay, there’s more words, sonnets and rhymes for another reader in another time. My Santa Fe is my dining room table on Sundays when my dad takes off work and makes us dinner. My background and upbringing is my Santa Fe. My heart soars for my London dreams and my Shakespeare visions, he is a genius, he is Santa Fe. My car aux cord which transports me consistently into the cast recordings of a myriad of Broadway shows is my Santa Fe. My friends call shotgun and we sing the words we know by heart and drive with no place to go, maybe we’re going to Santa Fe. A girl I know with crazy curly blonde hair and the greatest laugh of anyone I have ever met tells me, “I knew you were special the minute I came into your bedroom for the first time, I saw all of your books, and everything on your desk. All the pictures lining your walls. That’s when I knew.” She is my Santa Fe. The people that I have never ending conversations with over coffee are my Santa Fe. Anyone willing to read something I’ve recommended to them, or bare with me when I need to verbalize some crazy idea I’ve had. Strangers who say hello to me when they pass by me on their runs, and the lady that was so thankful when I lent her change for the parking meter when she had run out. This life, with its opportunity and its gigantic looming cities, begging me to come closer, is my Santa Fe. My eager green eyes which notice every single insignificant whisper of a thing overwhelm my senses with observations I need to internalize. With my whole life stretched in front of me on a blank canvas, I stand on the very edge ready to run, ready to explode. My Santa Fe will be one million colors and words and riffs and snacks. The enormous, immense, looming perhaps sitting right there in front of me. And all I have to do is take it with me.

In Newsies, we get the delightful surprise of hearing the familiar Santa Fe melody once again, at the climax of the story. This time, it is filled with energy and anger and hegemony that we have never seen from Jack Kelly before. It is his beautiful reprise. It is the very moment he promises to himself that Santa Fe is not a dream, it will be a reality. As a matter of fact, it has to be a reality. The stakes have risen to the very heavens and above. He has a beautiful reprise, and so do you, so do all of us. The moment that you realize you need your Santa Fe. Or when you finally look Santa Fe in the naked face and realize that maybe everything you’ve always wanted has been right under your nose the entire time. That beautiful reprise, with its melody and perfect anger. I’ve had a few reprises, and in the moment I would never consider any of them beautiful. But now I realize that maybe they are. When I’ve come out of the other side of something difficult and realized I met Santa Fe ten times while I was there. When I was halfway through my first half marathon and wished I could quit but didn’t. When I boldly stand adversity in the face time after time, never backing down. When I’ve created something I thought I would never be able to finish and maybe it sucks or it sounds wrong but it’s there, it’s created, it’s me, it’s my own beautiful reprise.

I am painfully aware that this life is not always so kind to all of us. I am painfully aware of the hate and violence and disrespect we face everyday. I am painfully aware that not everything can be so beautiful. But I am painfully aware that there is a spark of something burning inside of me. A spark of hope. I believe in the overture, I believe in finding the beauty in the mundane, I believe in creating something out of absolute dirt, and I believe in the feeling I capture with my heart and hands and eyes when I hear an overture begin. This will never be easy, Santa Fe, and life, and your beautiful reprise. But darling, I am sure you can stumble through. Discover your end all be all, your overture, that moment, that love, those precious eyes. I am painfully aware that it is easier said than done, but I will forever believe in Santa Fe.