The first time I heard the opening banjo notes of The Rainbow Connection coming from a frog on a stump in the swamp, I was just a kid sitting transfixed in the Admiral Theater in Bremerton, Washington, watching The Muppet Movie.
That was a palace with its marquee rimmed by lightning-trapped bulbs, a real ticket booth, a slanted hall with cavernous ceilings, balcony, and cushioned seats. And when you sat back, swinging legs that couldn’t touch the floor, and stared at the ceiling – you could see flying ships emerge from painted clouds. They were there – the faintest lines in the dimmest light for the youngest dreamers to see. I was one of them.
I just didn’t know how Kermit knew that. How did he know I was a lover and dreamer, that I heard voices, and that I’d follow him to Hollywood looking for a rainbow connection?
I wasn’t in a position to doubt him. After all, he was the daily reporter on Sesame Street, bravely delivering the news when all matter of blustery neighbors and elements tried to knock him over. How could I question him? As a son of the Pacific Northwest, I knew how hard it was to stand up in storms. And I was twice as big as him!
‘Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side?’ (Verse 1) Though I didn’t know many songs about rainbows then, I knew one. My family had been annually watching The Wizard of Oz on TV for years. How did Kermit know how I felt when hearing that first rainbow song? That I longed with all my heart for the magical place over the rainbow Dorothy sang about. Did he long for that, too?
‘Who said that every wish would be heard and answered when wished on the morning star?’ (Verse 2) How did Kermit know I wanted Pinocchio as my brother so we could wish on the same star? Or that I waited at the window for Peter Pan to teach me to fly?
‘Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices? I’ve heard them calling my name.’ (Verse 3) And how did he know my Sunday School stories? Like the one about Samuel who, while half asleep, heard a voice calling his name and ran to his father only to learn it wasn’t his father’s voice at all — it was God’s.
I heard it, too, Kermit. In my sleep. In my church. In the theater when you sang. And too many times to ignore it.
I heard it in the basement during my family’s annual pig roast when The Red Balloon died and rose again. I heard it when a stooped Southern preacher with a cane walked me down a windblown beach with Haystack Rock as our shadow and told me how he became a boy preacher. I heard it the first day I walked through the archway under the railroad tracks at Disneyland. I heard it from the rafters of a Broadway theater when Jean Valjean prayed Bring Him Home in Les Miserables. I heard it the night I dreamed a name in a language I’d never heard and was healed. And I heard it the day my first born child came into the world to the sound of doctors and nurses quoting Psalm 23.
After all these years, sometimes I hear it still. I heard it again in the theater with my own kids watching The Muppets, Kermit’s newest film in which he reprises the song. And I wondered again with him. ‘What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing and what do we think we might see? Someday we’ll find it — the rainbow connection — the lovers, the dreamers and me.’
I believed him then and I believe him now. When we’re half asleep, a voice calls each of us – too persistently for us to forever ignore – to search for and find our rainbow connection, our connection to the heavens. I heard it from Kermit that day many years ago and again in the theater this year with my own kids. And I keep searching for it. It’s why I love movies and Disneyland. It’s why I still go to church and pray. It’s why I write.
I don’t know how Kermit knew, but he did. I heard his clarion call, believed him with all my heart, and followed his lead. And when a rainbow broke through the theater ceiling at the climax of The Muppet Movie, I’m not sure one didn’t also break through the ceiling of that old Admiral Theater in Bremerton because it lit the path of one kid all the way to Hollywood. Thank you, Kermit.
And if you haven’t heard it lately, maybe this will refresh your memory.
Great review of a life, love the writing
Any favorite memories of the Admiral theater?
I never saw The Muppet Movie.
At age 16 in 1979 — when the film was released — I was swimming in the snark-infested waters of post-boomer teenage cynicism. My social set ridiculed sweetness and dreams, flashing our fangs like macho punk predators. Paul Williams’ uplifting verses in “Rainbow Connection” didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time. One of the most memorable bits of pop entertainment I experienced that year was Robin Williams’ comedy album “Reality…What a Concept.” Alas, his sinister parody of Mister Rogers is still etched in my brain.
We thought we were so cool, way too cool to go to the theater and watch the same fake fuzzy characters on the big screen that we once watched on black-and-white TVs, with endorsements from child-educators.
Yet Kermit definitely played his banjo in the background. And his song re-surfaced for me in a strange way, when I decided on a whim to buy a Carpenter’s Greatest Hits album a few years ago. I wanted to re-investigate some of 70s I’d shunned at the time. The Carpenters, like the muppets, were a part of pop culture that I had largely dismissed.
So there I was, driving home late one evening, subjecting the family to my newly purchased musical experimentation. I was working my way through songs like “Top of the World,” “Sing,” “We’ve Only Just Begun,” and “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.” The young natives were getting restless, but I didn’t care. Dad was reclaiming some of the sweet pop self I’d lost in my teens.
Jennifer played along as best she could. But she was also in the thick of high school in 1979. She never saw The Muppet Movie either.
Then it happened. Just as the family had reached the threshold of their patience, and I was about to switch cds, we heard the toy piano intro to The Carpenter’s cover of “Rainbow Connection.”
Suddenly I started sobbing. It felt like the door of an old mean room where I’d been trapped in my youth had been opened.
Bless you RW for being a bit younger and wiser than me in 1979, and for re-opening that door to the spirit in this post.
Well, dang, Watt! I spend hours trying to capture and then polish a poetic piece on an emotional memory and you transcend it with an off the cuff REPLY! Oh, how I am humbled 🙂 Thanks for the response.
I dream of conveying transcendental truths in off-the-cuff replies; but that didn’t happen here. Your inspired and carefully crafted words moved me to think about something important for a couple of days, then I found time to compose a comment. Thank YOU for the gift of your writing.