i love you, make happy

i rewatched the closing number from make happy last night, and i was so overcome with emotion that i felt compelled to write about it, even though i have already extensively reviewed and analysed the comedy hour in gripping and graphic detail. go find that on my blog archive, i published it last august and it's quite possibly the best thing i've ever written.

bo burnham and his work in comedy mean a lot to me. he'd hate me for saying this, but he's relatable, or at least, his stage persona is. what. had me hook, line, and sinker from the opening number, but it was the more existentially fraught pieces in the hour, like left brain right brain, out of the abyss, we think we know you, and that one line from sad -- "tragedy will be exclusively joked about / because my empathy is bumming me out" -- that really got me where it mattered. when i watched what. for the first time back when i was seventeen, exisentialism was my shit. i soaked up bo burnham because he was saying exactly what i was interested in, and he also gave me kind of a depressed vibe and i felt a certain kinship with people who gave me a depressed vibe. (he's also funny as fuck. i will give him credit for being a fucking hilarious dude. he is a comedian, after all.)

but make happy felt so much more personal, both as a piece of art bo had created and was performing and as something i was taking in and experiencing. when i watched it for the first time back in june 2016, i was transported. enthralled. enchanted. i watched it a second time an hour later. i watched it a third time then next day. i watched it a fourth time several months later, and still enjoyed it just as much. it consumed my every waking thought, and i probably dreamed about it, too. my review, which took 15 hours to write and edit, went up within four days of the special airing on netflix. writing it felt like a necessity, like the words were in my bloodstream and i would die if i didn't flush them out. make happy inspired me and fascinated me and excited me the way nothing else ever has. not even hamilton got me this good, and my hamilton review (another stunning piece of writing by yours truly) took even longer to write than my make happy one. make happy just felt so special to me, like bo had wrapped it in a bow and placed it right into my hands, saying, "here, sarah. i made this for you. here's something you're really going to love."

and i did. the dude gets me.

but that's not what i'm writing about, quickly and sloppily and lovingly, tonight. when i watched can't handle this again last night, as i hadn't done in many months, i realised that the emotion i was feeling -- the excitement, the adoration, the admiration, all of it -- felt just as it had on june 4th 2016. my love for make happy had not diminished by even the slightest amount, but more than that, the comedy hour was able to make me feel as if i had never seen it before. i felt the exact same emotions watching it last night as i did watching it nearly a year ago. that, i think, is remarkable. i am definitely the kind of person who wishes they could forget having watched a show so they could enjoy watching it for the first time all over again, but i don't have to do that with make happy, because every time feels like the first time. every time, i learn something new, and every time, i am just as spellbound. i think it's so cool when art is able to do that to a person. when art can make you feel things just as raw and deep and intimate every time you experience it. that's how art makes its mark. that's how art becomes something that matters. 

in summary: i love you, make happy. i loved you then, i love you now, and i will love you until the day i die.