Halfway Down the Stairs

In a recent entry, I posted the video of “Halfway Down the Stairs,” which is one of my favorite Muppet Show segments. As great as the segment is, there is something to the simplicity of both the music and the lyrics that speak to me. There is an inherent duality in its meaning, and I am never quite sure if it is a hopeful piece or a depressed piece.

On The Muppet Show, it’s sung by Robin Frog, Kermit’s nephew. (Though we do not actually find him to be Kermit’s nephew until the season following this sketch.) Robin Frog is always a slightly depressed character. He’s the underdog the Muppets. He’s the one that nobody really notices, but he’s genuinely liked and would be missed if he weren’t there. I guess I relate a lot with Robin. Perhaps it’s more in my head than a real one-to-one correlation, but this song is part of what makes me love Robin.

It’s a song really about a special place – a place of solitude and reflection, a place that “really isn’t anywhere, it’s somewhere else instead.” In my own life, I have had many places like this, and I am yet to figure out if these are happy places or sad places.

When I was little – say 5 years old and under – I loved nothing more than being in places that only I could fit. When I was VERY little, I used to love to stand under the kitchen table, the place where I could be surrounded by the action and be completely free of everyone else, as I was the only one who could fit. I reigned over the kingdom of under-the-table. I would play with toy cars. I would stand there when I didn’t want to go somewhere that my mother was making me go. I would just go to get away from it all. (More often than not, I’d take my teddy bear with me, as even the powerful ruler of table-opolis needs a companion and confidant.)

When I grew too large for the kitchen table, I used my abilities to curl up in a little ball – something I can still do quite impressively today for a so-called grown-up – to my advantage and would curl into laundry baskets, again with my teddy bear, and sit contently.

As I grew older, my me-places became more normal solitude places: My car on a long drive; Long walks on the beach; Long showers; My piano bench. (Incidentally, I hated being interrupted while practicing piano not because of the rigors of practice, but because it was the only place I really felt like I could be alone without leaving the house, as my entire being would get into practicing and I did not like being torn away from that world.)

In all of these me-places, one constant remains: duality. Sometimes it’s where I escape to cry; sometimes it’s where I escape to revel in glory; sometimes it’s where I go to reflect on the future, itself an action of ambiguity and duality.

Having such strong attachments to music, many songs – or specific recordings – have an emotion tied to them when I hear them, be it one I’ve implanted onto it, one tied to a specific memory, or one deliberately written into it.

“Halfway down the stairs,” however, is one whose emotion changes as fluidly as my own.

But I always love it and it’s always me. I guess it’s a place where I always stop, too.

Rather than post the video again, I’ll link to it, but I will also type out the lyrics here:

(video here)

Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit.
There isn’t any other stair quite like it.
I’m not at the bottom,
I’m not at the top.
So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs it isn’t up and isn’t down.
It isn’t in the nursery, it isn’t in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts,
Run round my head.
It isn’t really anywhere, it’s somewhere else instead.