6,700,000 minutes running, 235,000 odd minutes left. (–and counting).

How do you measure—-

Measure success?

Measure a life?

A gritty, sad, uplifting tale, tossed into the 1990’s in NYC and it is iconic now. Just the other day I was in the city for the afternoon, on a no particular destination roam-about. And walking past The Nedelander Theater, the walls covered with graffiti caught me as they do, and the wash of a variety of emotions churned around in my mind.

My daughter Arlie fell in love with Rent way back in the 8th grade, 10 years ago. I closed my eyes and could see her smiling face as she opened the envelope on Christmas morning with her tickets to Rent. She lived with the CD in her Walkman, all the lyrics committed to memory. And it’s probably on her Ipod at this moment.

Another vision of Arlie and I, walking through the smoky, dusty streets of Manhattan on September the 15 or 16 2001, on our way to purchase tickets to Rent so her soon to be step-sister could see the show.

We stood on Broadway in the dusky late afternoon as a parade of heavy machinery, designed to tear things apart, crept southward, and the more final implications of their actions reached deep inside our aching hearts; because those behemoths were all but declaring no one would be found living in the rubble, Guilani’s continued TV proclamations of searching longer to the contrary. It was a quiet moment on Broadway, the same thought probably flitting through every persons mind.

Rent has been on Broadway, it occurs to me, most of Arlie’s conscious life. All of her adult life. And now she is graduating from college next month (FINALLY ;} ) and Rent will be closing soon too. All around us, things change, grow,move on.

It seems fitting I think, that maybe tickets to Rent could be a part of her graduation celebration. It’s always been there for her so far. Guess I need to find out how difficult it will be to find some tickets to the show.

So how odd indeed, to come home and find an article in the New York Times on the actual genesis of the Wall at the Nederlander? It’s an interesting article… Click here!

Look at my Flickr photos (to the right) for the photos I took last week.