Daniel Okrent

but primarily Judy Prince, who never gave interviews, that in fact it was about revenge.

Yeah, there are two major arcs to his life.

One is from absolute alienation to finally near the end of his life connection.

The other is from an ambivalence that could be crippling at times to resolution, to knowing who he was and what he was capable of doing.

But it took 50 years for him to move from one of those poles to the next one.

I think that's a sentence that says a great deal about his entire career and his entire life, that through his music and his lyrics, he was able to express things that he could not, for various forms of inhibition, express otherwise.

It was where, if it's not autobiographical, obviously he's not slitting throats.

Obviously, you know, he's not

Georges Seurat, obviously he's not in the woods and into the woods, but the feelings expressed in those shows all come from inside of him, I think, very, very clearly.

Absolutely.

And it's the inhibitions that keep us from expressing those feelings.

No.

And socially, it's a very good thing to do.

And sometimes when he was in a bad mood, he would let them out socially.

But mostly it came through in his songs.

And one of the things that's very important to know about Sondheim that enabled him to bring them out in his songs, those feelings, were the disinhibiting effects of alcohol and drugs.

And alcohol particularly was something that he consumed in great quantities.

His collaborators said, you know, it didn't impair his ability to work, but he would drink all day long.

Marijuana, cocaine for a period, but mostly alcohol, great, great quantities of alcohol.

The cabaret performer Michael Feinstein reported about having his assistant call Sondheim,