A swan’s beauty and grace is matched by its brutality in the way of survival. Power and might must be tempered with all that is exquisite; every gift of elegance must be tainted with icy indifference. Nothing is ever perfect, no entity is ever truly divine. That rarely keeps us from trying – to achieve perfection, to achieve divinity, to be something better than we are today.
I’ve said that so many times before…
This dance of the swans sets the scene for any sort of magic that I attempted to conjure twenty years ago. It’s a hint of the dance to come – a dance I hope you will join. We need to dance these days. Dancing may be the only thing to keep us from going mad.
One day, in the spring, I found a pile of gray feathers in the backyard. It looked like a morning dove had exploded, but most likely it was the quick work of a hawk or some other larger bird of prey. I don’t think a land animal could have been as vicious or fast enough to do something so devastating. Creatures of the air are more terrifying that way. Like the swans.
Music without words, emotions without expression, the riotous heart, the soothing sea, and all the feels. Evocative of the beginning of most fairy tales, when the world still seems like it might not change, when the trajectory and irrevocable journey we find ourselves on could still be something of our dreams, we begin every tale with the confusing dust of a fairy beautifully clouding our view.
A siren song sets the scene in motion, and when it’s over the trick of time – cunning and relentless and brutal – does everything it can to take the song away.
Hold onto it in your head, hold onto it in your heart, hold onto it when it feels like there is no melody left to remember. Far too often, we don’t realize when things are beginning, only when they are already in motion and hurtling along at breakneck pace. Those trains don’t stop easily, and the world will completely derail your plans if you’re not careful.
Beautiful Dreamer, wake unto me, Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee; Sounds of the rude world heard in the day, Lull’d by the moonlight have all passed away!
Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song, List while I woo thee with soft melody; Gone are the cares of life’s busy throng
Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea, Mermaids are chanting the wild Lorelei; Over the stream let vapors are borne, Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.
We started the day with the Danish String Quartet, and it feels like that’s the ideal way to close the day out as well. We begin in silence and end the same way – what happens in between is mostly up to us. A scary thought burdened with responsibility, and I know that feels like a lot right now – at least, it does for me. There aren’t words or sentences powerful enough to profoundly change most of our trajectories, not in a single hour or day, often not in a single year or decade, but we nudge, we cajole, we embrace in the hope of making some small difference.
This winter already feels like an eternity of bad news and trying times. My friend Chris asked me a while back how I’m dealing with everything – like the descent of fascism in this once-great country, for frivolous example – and I told him that I was focusing on how artists and people of compassion lived during such treacherous times. In my case it would be to create a safe haven in our home, for friends and family and anyone who still believed in truth and beauty and freedom and love – and to live my life as authentically and defiantly as I’ve always lived my life. Perhaps even more-so in the face of rewinding history to a more heinous time.
We move forward, in the face of oppression and hate – unleashed and unraveled with the awful complicity of misinformed, ignorant, selfish people – and we do so while trying not to get bogged down by all that awfulness. A bit of turning a blind eye, a bit of self-preservation, a bit of fighting back – the things some of us in marginalized communities have always had to do, as we have never experienced a time when we didn’t have to do it. Maybe that’s eye-opening for privileged lucky folks, maybe it’s something they still choose not to see. My place hasn’t changed much; my armor hasn’t rusted. There is power in that, and a little bit of peace too.
Suzie introduced me to the music of the Danish String Quartet, and every winter around this time I turn to their songs to quell the wildness of the outside world and the wilderness of the heart. This past week of madness and morification, coupled with the coldest temperatures we’ve had thus far this winter, has necessitated some peace and calm and comfort. My daily meditations have provided such a haven, as has an intentional effort to remain unruffled and unbothered by all the news that tried to creep into our daily existence.
I didn’t always succeed, and there were moments when I reared into righteous and defiant anger, but I did my best to strike a balance. These are things we learn to navigate throughout our entire lives. Hopefully I haven’t neared the end of it yet. And somewhere within this interminable winter there is a flower – perhaps it is only the seed, or the desiccated, hollow stem, or the deep, frozen root – but it is there, waiting for the return of spring.
“The world may of all things bereave me, Its thorns may assail and aggrieve me, The foe may great anguish engender: My rose I will never surrender.” ~ Now Found Is The Fairest Of Roses
Outside, a blanket of white snow has kept the ground secure. Snow acts somewhat strangely as the garden’s best insulator, and surprise savior, so long as it lasts. When it falls, it casts a different spell – something mesmerizing, something meditative, something that stills time. Watching from the cozy confines of a conversation couch, I pause in my reading and survey our front yard. I remember when the twins excitedly romped through the green grass of late summer, when the first blooms of the Chinese dogwood opened their delicate sepals, when the Japanese painted fern nodded its impossibly-gorgeous fronds in a warm breeze…
The panoply of life plays out, each day like a snowflake – unique, one-of-a-kind, precious and as rare as it is common and mundane – and all the days so heartbreakingly beautiful, even the worst ones – because to have a bad day means you still understand what it is to feel things. Most of the tears we shed are out of love – love that wasn’t returned, love that was lost, love that was misguided into hurt, love that those who departed seemed to take with them – but almost always it was love propelling our sorrow. What comfort and what splendor resides in such a realization.
I don’t allow myself to feel that as much as I should.
It was the winter of 1996 when I discovered this musical gem from George Michael’s catalog, years after it had originally been released. I had just started living in Boston, and the snow had arrived earlier in the month, after my Uncle and cousins had painted the condo for the first time. We’d spent a frigid few days there, in a haze of my Uncle’s smoke and the gentle clicking and dribble of the coffee maker.
I’d say love was a magical thing I’d say love would keep us from pain Had I been there Had I been there I would promise you all of my life But to lose you would cut like a knife So I don’t dare No, I don’t dare
When they left, and I was alone in the condo that first winter, I felt the first twinges of loneliness, and there was such terror and horror in that I immediately pushed it from my mind. Knowing myself, I understood I might not survive if I gave in to that, and so I willed myself to be ok with being alone. You can do that. We like to pretend that we can’t, but it is possible. We can train ourselves to endure. I won’t, and can’t, say whether that’s right or wrong; so many things aren’t simple binary choices. And you can will yourself to be something better than you are today.
‘Cause I’ve never come close in all of these years You are the only one to stop my tears And I’m so scared I’m so scared
At the time, I didn’t entirely realize what I was doing. I understood that I was forcing myself to grow up, but it all felt like another guise, another image, another facet of a personality I hadn’t quite figured out how to reconcile. There were minutes when I seemed to watch myself go through the motions of life – stepping out of a shower into the cold air and shivering as I watched a mottled city through the steam-clouded window. Standing in the kitchen and swigging a carton of orange juice after ravenously tearing into an untoasted and undressed bagel – as I didn’t have toaster or glass or chair. So many things seemed to be missing, and somehow I felt more complete and whole at that time than in recent years. Maybe we are the most full in our youth, and with every passing year we simply lose a little bit more of ourselves.
Take me back in time, maybe I can forget Turn a different corner and we never would have met Would you care?
I don’t understand it, for you it’s a breeze Little by little, you’ve brought me to my knees Don’t you care?
I knew that I craved companionship, and for a socially-anxious introvert (try as I might to outwardly dispel it by donning the role of flamboyant extrovert) I realized my quest would prove quite difficult. That was the restlessness I felt, that was the longing. That was also the unsettling sense of confusion that piled question upon question up in my head. Rooms filled with wonder, not the kind tinged with marvel, but the sort bound with worry, and when I look back at my prior selves I grow weary with the nonsense I put us all through.
With each day, however, I learned to be a better companion to myself. I remembered when I used to walk in the woods as a boy, perfectly content to make the journey on my own. Solitude was something I once craved too. In a foreshadowing of mindfulness, I inhabited the moment, taking each hour as it came rather than planning out weeks and months and years in advance, as had been my overly-organized wont. I studied the way the sun moved through the space, the way the light ebbed and flowed during a day. I made myself the occasional dinner, realizing at an embarrassing evening with a close friend (thank God it was Alissa), and at an embarrassingly-late stage in life for such things, that I should put the pasta into the water after it started boiling, not before. It may have felt like I was merely going through the motions, but in doing so I was simultaneously living.
We lead so many lives in a single lifetime. It’s exhausting to look back at them all. Satisfying too.
No, I’ve never come close in all of these years You are the only one to stop my tears I’m so scared of this love
And if all that there is Is this fear of being used I should go back to being lonely and confused If I could, I would, I swear
We don’t want to say goodbye to this year’s Christmas tree, which in Andy’s opinion (and I share it) was one of our most beautiful. It still smells lovely – a fresh, lush, balsam beauty that rivals any cologne I could ever wear. Taking off its accessories and sending it back into the cold is always a sad exercise for Andy – and I share in that sadness as well. So let us have some music to lift and buoy the Friday night spirits – a suite for flute and jazz piano trio by Claude Bolling.
This has been on every winter’s playlist for as long as I can remember, coming when the post-holiday blues are beginning to settle in, when the days are dark and the nights are long, and that wind is cruel and cutting. The time when summer feels as distant as it can be, because it actually is, and instead of being even cautiously optimistic, you give in to despair and try to sleep it all away.
Before you set yourself to slumber, take a moment to listen to this fun rollercoaster ride of effervescent and occasionally melancholy music – idea for a winter’s night.
The immaculately-talented singer Linda Eder first cast her spell on me when I saw her in ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ on Broadway. Since then I’ve been a fan, catching her live on occasion and thrilling at how she performs a song. This one has changed and come to mean different things over the years. I won’t bore you with what it means to me now – take it in and make it your own story.
Even now…I remember all the empty spaces You filled with love Even now…Every corner of the world we shared Is still filled with love Even now…not a day goes by When I don’t ache for you Through my tears I still hear your laughter even now
Even now…you are in my dreams and in my dreams You always will be Even now…You’re the one true thing that brings my heart Back home to me When I’m scared…I can close my eyes You are there…Ever young And somehow, I can always find you even now
Even now…you are in my dreams and in my dreams You always will be Even now…You’re the one true thing that brings my heart Back home here to me Even now…in my darkest night Still you shine silver light So I fall through forever with you even now
Like Bon Jovi, Roxette played a bigger part in the musical soundtrack of my youth than I realized. This one takes me back to regaling classmates to a study hall in the library. Nobody knew where any of us would end up – hell, some of us weren’t sure we’d make it out of study hall alive, much less high school itself. I never doubted the latter, and something in me knew that peaking in high school was an easy power-grab for lasting misery later in life. Perhaps that’s what made it bearable when it sucked.
In a time Where the sun descends alone I ran a long, long way from home To find a heart that’s made of stone
I will try I just need a little time To get your face right out of my mind To see the world through different eyes
This morning’s flower post put me in a floral state of mind, so here’s another nod to the theme, populated by photos from a recent trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Back in high school I had to hide my love for flowers and plants, like I had to hide so many other things – the essence of me, hidden and tamped down in the service of survival.
Every time I see you, oh, I try to hide away But when we meet, it seems I can’t let go Every time you leave the room I feel I’m fading like a flower
Tell me why When I scream, there’s no reply When I reach out, there’s nothing to find When I sleep, I break down and cry (cry), yeah
Every time I see you, oh, I try to hide away But when we meet, it seems I can’t let go (can’t let go) Every time you leave the room I feel I’m fading like a flower
One of my “fans” recently complained that I post too many flower stories. She then tried to explain that she didn’t even read my blog but one of her “side-pieces” had reported to her that it was all flowers and hot men so she didn’t need to bother. One of my mainstay favorite parts of this blog over the years has been the unsolicited complaint, usually proffered from someone who says they don’t actually read it but hears about what I write. While my use of the word ‘favorite’ is somewhat steeped in sarcasm, it genuinely doesn’t bother me. In truth, it has actually been a source of amusement and pride in still ruffling feathers enough to merit comment or criticism twenty-plus years into this adventure.
There is also something flawed in anyone who dismisses the power inherent in the beauty and ephemeral grace of a flower. It speaks to a lack of development of true power and appreciation, as does attempting to bring down anything that doesn’t directly speak to one’s own preferences.
There’s glitter on the floor after the party Girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby Candle wax and Polaroids on the hardwood floor You and me from the night before, but
Don’t read the last page But I stay when you’re lost, and I’m scared, and you’re turning away I want your midnights But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day
Rumors of ‘Reputation (Taylor’s Version)’ being the next Taylor Swift release, as well as the date of this post being in effect for a few more hours, ‘New Year’s Day‘ feels like the fitting end for this first day of the new year. It sounds like something from the ‘folklore‘ or ‘evermore‘ sessions, and I love it for that – some of the lyrics hint at what was to come – foreshadowing at its finest.
You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi I can tell that it’s gonna be a long road I’ll be there if you’re the toast of the town, babe Or if you strike out and you’re crawling home
Don’t read the last page But I stay when it’s hard, or it’s wrong, or we’re making mistakes I want your midnights But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day
Hold on to the memories They will hold on to you Hold on to the memories They will hold on to you Hold on to the memories They will hold on to you And I will hold on to you
Will this year bring the soft sentiment of this song, or will it be more of a ‘Reputation’ snake-fest? Only time will tell – and time always tells. Whether or not we are here for the telling is the only question. The new year is quietly dramatic like that – perhaps we use all the bombast and confetti to disguise the trauma of such a turn in time. {Clink your champagne flutes here.}
Please don’t ever become a stranger Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere Please don’t ever become a stranger Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere
There’s glitter on the floor after the party Girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby Candle wax and Polaroids on the hardwood floor You and me, forevermore
A time of promise and trepidation, and a whole new year laid out before us. If it was already written out, if the plans were there in the stars or already downloaded to destiny, would you look ahead to see what happens? Or would you let it all unfurl without trying to change or make it better?
Don’t read the last page But I stay when it’s hard, or it’s wrong, or we’re making mistakes I want your midnights But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day
Hold on to the memories They will hold on to you Hold on to the memories They will hold on to you Hold on to the memories They will hold on to you And I will hold on to you
The voiceovers come toward the final second of her breathtaking 1991 documentary (and in large part the birth of reality television to come) ‘Truth or Dare‘ – Madonna’s various entourage members are giving various snippets of commentary on her admittedly zany life, while she pads around her hotel room, alone and isolated, sipping a cup of coffee and reading the paper. So many people talking about her, while she is in such quiet and solitude. Say all the hateful words you want, it still rings of loneliness and power.
Everything is subject to her approval or disapproval.
Everything has to do with what she wants, what she doesn’t want, how it should look, where it should go, what it should be. It’s very tense. She’s unhappy a lot of the time. She’s a bitch sometimes.
Madonna can be mean, if she wants to. We all can. I love it when she’s mean.
She hasn’t been a bitch to me, I don’t think.
She knows what she’s doing. She knows how to work. That’s probably why she’s such a big star.
I feel like she’s a little girl lost in a storm sometimes. There’s just like a whole whirlwind of things going on around her and sometimes she gets caught up in it.
I think of this scene often, especially when life starts feeling overwhelming. How little credit we give the entertainers, the tricksters, the people who make life worth talking about. How quickly we condemn and heap hate on them for doing the only things they know how to do. And how much we love building people up to tear them down. It’s exasperating – the way the start of the holiday season often feels. When that happens, I pause and play the one song that never fails to lift me up.
Cue the music, cue the snapping, and strike a pose.
There was a musical accompaniment to go along with the ‘shades of gray’ project from 2004 – and as we re-explore that written work, I offer the following playlist as recommended listening for when you go through these vignettes. It’s largely contemplative instrumentals, but there are some traditional pop songs as well. The latter selections are lyrical wonders, echoing the spare power of carefully-chosen words. All serve to evoke an air of
Dinner at eight was okay
Before the toast full of gleams
It was great until those old magazines
Got us started up again
Actually it was probably me again
Why is it so that I’ve always been the one who must go
That I’ve always been the one told to flee
When it fact you were the one long ago
Actually in the drifting white snow
You left me
A centerpiece would have to be ‘Dinner at Eight’ by Rufus Wainwright, which features an exquisite piano treatise on love, family, and the eventual need to find acceptance and move on; as evidenced by the lyrics running throughout this post, it’s as poignant and powerful as it is sorrowful and resigned – a gorgeous mess of emotion set to glorious song. The following songs follow suit – give them a listen as you revisit this project from two long decades ago…
We’re a little over halfway through presenting ‘shades of gray’ already, so there is some more to come, and just around the Thanksgiving holiday – the way that life’s little fuck-overs often come at the worst possible time. We don’t choose these things – they choose us, or something like that. I’m out of banal platitudes and all the rest of it.
I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser Midnights become my afternoons When my depression works the graveyard shift All of the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room…
My 8th grade class at Wilbur H. Lynch Middle School in Amsterdam, New York had the usual cast of teenage characters – football players, cheerleaders, band members, slack-offs, fuck-ups, nerds, jocks, beauty queens, drama kids – the typical coterie of children masquerading as adults, just beginning to find our way and carve out identities of who we might be. Despite our varied interests and the panoply of society under one roof, we lacked one essential ingredient: a villain. Because of that, and despite the usual drama of teenage angst and budding hormonal avalanches, school was a rather dull and boring affair.
It was up to the one person with the flair for the dramatic and diabolical to set things into some semblance of half-interesting motion – and I was the only one wiling to do it. Did I sacrifice a certain mainstream popularity to do it? Perhaps. Did I throw away my chance at being voted Best Dressed Man when high school rolled around and those designations were really just votes on who was well-liked? Probably. Did I sink my teeth into the role with the relish and zeal of someone desperate for something – anything – to shake up the dull hallways of that school and wreak havoc with friendship circles? Better than anyone else.
I should not be left to my own devices They come with prices and vices I end up in crisis (tale as old as time) I wake up screaming from dreaming One day I’ll watch as you’re leaving ‘Cause you got tired of my scheming (For the last time)
It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me At tea time, everybody agrees I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero
Looking back, it was all so much silliness, but at the time how malevolent it seemed – and how terribly was it taken. I watched the maneuverings of the girls in my class, how they wrote notes to one another, passing them back and forth when the teacher’s back was turned. I saw their friendship circles and noticed the whispers they would adopt in favor of some and against certain others. I was a master at appearing uninterested and uninvolved, while all the time not one single side-eye or shifty gaze escaped my notice. I was also adept at sneaking these notes out of their bags when they weren’t looking, and reading what they wrote about everyone else.
It was a glimpse into a secret world I would later access through more benign means – at that time it was a brutal violation of their privacy, but what cares a villain for such codes of honor and simple human decency? Nothing would jolt our narrative or change the dull doldrums of Amsterdam unless I did it. And so I hatched my simple plan, stealing the notes of my classmates and putting them into the hands of the very people they were maligning. Words never meant for certain people were deposited by me as the secret villain – and I left a trail of hurt feelings, betrayal, and distrust in my undetected wake. Supposed friends turned against supposed friends, wondering at first how things came to unintended light, struggling to repair wounds, holding on to not being hated. In the justifications that I conjured as I gave myself over to such darkness, I reasoned that they had a right to know what others were saying, that truth and transparency were better than polite deceit and tolerance. In reality, I think I just wanted to fuck things up. Out of boredom, out of wanting to be part of something, out of sheer mean delight.
Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby And I’m a monster on the hill Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city Pierced through the heart, but never killed
Eventually I revealed myself as the perpetrator – and then the real fun began. When I managed to procure an especially juicy note, I held it over the writer as a form of power and persuasion. My reputation was earned and burned and sealed in stone right then and there – and though there would be redemptive movements and saving graces, I’d take that villainous persona with me wherever I went – even when I tried to kill it. Like most villains, my path would always and only end with my own internal consumption.
Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism Like some kind of congressman? (Tale as old as time) I wake up screaming from dreaming One day I’ll watch as you’re leaving And life will lose all its meaning (For the last time)
It’s been a long time since I felt that way, however, and the image of a villain has remained latent and silent all these years. Only when faced with certain pain and childish acting-out have I thought about revisiting such merry mayhem. Villainy has its benefits, foremost among them a freedom that comes only when you’ve given up all the fucks and are ready to let the world find out. Am I reveling in such an idea? Absolutely. It’s time I once again had some of the fun that everyone else has been having. Will I get called out on it? Unlike the others, of course I will. That’s the way it goes (see previous reference to having no more fucks to give). There will come a time when all grievances come to light, and while I won’t dare to judge anyone for it, the truth has always spoken louder than anything I could ever shout. When put down in words, the most atrocious acts are suddenly contained, and often that mere capturing of them somehow lessens their atrociousness. Or so the justification for villainy goes…
It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me (I’m the problem, it’s me) At tea time, everybody agrees I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero
