Zero

"After Stanley taught Zero the last six letters of the alphabet, he taught him to write his name.
'Capital Z - e - r - o.'
Zero wrote the letters as Stanley said them. 'Zero,' he said, looking at his piece of paper. His smile was too big for his face.
Stanley watched him write it over and over again.
Zero Zero Zero Zero Zero Zero Zero ...
In a way, it made him sad. He couldn't help but think that a hundred times zero was still nothing."
-- from Holes by Louis Sachar

Zero is something of a mathematical oddity. In principle, it seems simple enough to understand. Zero means nothing; it's what you write when there isn't anything to count. But try working with zero, and you'll soon find that it doesn’t play by the rules. Add it to something, and it doesn't make the something bigger. Subtract it from something, and the something doesn’t get smaller. Multiply it by something, and it completely wipes the something out. And heaven forbid you try to divide something by zero. All sorts of chaotic things can happen.

Zero is neither positive nor negative. It’s neither prime nor composite. Raise anything to the zero power, and the answer is 1. But raise zero to any power, and the answer is 0. Except, of course, if you raise zero to the zero power. That’s undefined. If you append a zero onto a number, you increase the number by a factor of ten. Well, unless it’s after the decimal point; in that case, the number does not change. Oh, and 0! = 1, but only by convention.

The list goes on, but don’t worry. I can say it simply: Zero is a pain in the ass. My professional life is plagued by sticky situations involving zero, perhaps more so now that I work on elementary materials. I must confess that these are the sorts of things I thought about when I first read the quote above in my latest book. I spent fifteen minutes or so yesterday thinking about how I could turn these ideas into a blog that would be interesting to anyone who is not a math textbook editor.

I failed. After all, a lame joke like “zero is a pain in the ass” only takes you so far. I figured I would have to take a quote from my next book. But as fate would have it, the fifteen minutes I spent thinking about this were the fifteen minutes before the curtain rose on my latest musical theater experience: Billy Elliott. And as the show progressed, I became more and more certain that I had missed the point of Stanley’s comment entirely.

Billy Elliott is the story of an 11-year-old boy living in Britain during the 1984 coal strike. His father gives him money for boxing lessons, but when he is late one day, he ends up using the money for the ballet class that follows the boxing lesson. Turns out the kid is talented. And the talent unleashes a fiery passion. Billy wants to be a ballet dancer, and his talent and passion eventually gets the whole town full of coal-mining men behind him.

Billy Elliott is an emotionally charged show all on its own. With music written by Elton John, how could it not be? The melodies tugged at my heartstrings through the whole show. But my breaking point came about three-quarters of the way through the show, during a song called “Electricity.” Billy sings about the way dancing makes him feel. Something comes over him, he says, and he is just free. By the end of the song, I was crying.

So what does this have to do with zero? Well… my own personal zero made me cry.

Did I mention that Billy Elliott was the 64th musical I have seen? Musical theater has been a little hobby of mine since I was in sixth grade. I saw a high school production of The Music Man that year, and I immediately fell in love with the whole concept – a way of storytelling that recognizes the funniest, deepest, and most crucial moments, and pauses to let the characters sing about them. If only life would allow us to stop and expand all our most important moments that way. To really reflect on and appreciate them. (And maybe even to record ourselves singing about them, so we can listen to them again later!) (Okay, maybe not that last part.)

A few months later, I saw Bye Bye Birdie, and suffered a small shock when I saw one of my own classmates on stage. She sang, she danced, she smiled. She paused to sing at the big moments. And suddenly I realized that watching the shows was really only scratching the surface. I could actually be in a show.

I started to sporadically audition for musicals. I never got in while I was in middle school. While I was cast in several straight shows in high school, and performed in several musical theater workshops, I still never made it into a musical. Private voice lessons and spending hours upon hours volunteering at the community theater made no difference. I just didn’t have the voice or the confidence. I continued to audition, and my fervor to be cast did not abate. Yet the number of shows I had been in stayed stubbornly at zero.

Meanwhile, college application deadlines were swiftly approaching. To help juniors and seniors start thinking about college majors and career paths, my high school administered an interest and ability inventory. It asked questions about what you like to do and what you are good at, and spat out this nifty little graphic displaying your interests and abilities. Your ideal college major or career was supposedly in the area where your interests and abilities overlapped.

I still remember the day that my counselor laid my results down in front of me. My interests and my abilities pointed in completely opposite directions; there was no overlap at all. Interests: the arts. Abilities: math and science. My less-than-helpful counselor smiled sheepishly and said, “I guess you can do whatever you want!”

At age 17, I was not at all concerned with what the results said about my possible career paths. But when I looked at that graphic, something inside me understood that it wasn’t only interest that mattered. If I wanted to be in a musical, I needed some ability, too. And my audition record did not suggest that I had it.

I wouldn’t say that I completely gave up at that point, but as I left high school to go to college, and college to go to Chicago, opportunities to audition became fewer, and I did not seek them out. Instead, I just kept going to see shows.

And that brings me to yesterday, when I sat and watched my 64th musical and listened to a little boy sing about how dancing sets him free. And it made me cry. Because all I could think was, 64 times zero is still nothing.

As Billy sang about the electricity that goes through him when he dances, I couldn’t help but remember what made me fall in love with musical theater to begin with. It’s the expression and release of emotions. I’m a deeply, deeply emotional person, and I would give anything – anything – for the chance to stand up on stage and belt out a song that means something to me. That’s why I have always wanted to be in a musical. When I listen to the songs, I imagine the huge emotional release the characters (and the actors) must feel. And I’m jealous. I love watching musical theater, but ultimately, it only makes me want to be a musical more. Sixty-four musicals, or 100, or 1,000 – multiply that by zero, and it’s still nothing. I still haven’t experienced what I really want to experience.

A long time ago, I gave up on the idea of being in musical. I told myself that I wasn’t good enough.

But as I was falling asleep last night, I thought about my zero. I thought about how it only takes one to get from zero to one. Maybe, just maybe, if I put in some work, I could get from zero to one.

Zero times anything is still nothing. But multiply by one instead, and you can get anything. It only takes one to get from zero to one, but the difference between zero and one is huge.

All I want is one. One will be enough. And maybe, just maybe, one is attainable.

I’m starting private voice lessons next month.